Tunable and Cooperative Thermomechanical Properties of Protein-Metal-Organic Frameworks.
J.B.Bailey,
F.A.Tezcan.
ABSTRACT
We recently introduced protein-metal-organic frameworks (protein-MOFs) as
chemically designed protein crystals, composed of ferritin nodes that
predictably assemble into 3D lattices upon coordination of various metal ions
and ditopic, hydroxamate-based linkers. Owing to their unique tripartite
construction, protein-MOFs possess extremely sparse lattice connectivity,
suggesting that they might display unusual thermomechanical properties.
Leveraging the synthetic modularity of ferritin-MOFs, we investigated the
temperature-dependent structural dynamics of six distinct frameworks. Our
results show that the thermostabilities of ferritin-MOFs can be tuned through
the metal component or the presence of crowding agents. Our studies also reveal
a framework that undergoes a reversible and isotropic first-order phase
transition near-room temperature, corresponding to a 4% volumetric change within
1 °C and a hysteresis window of ∼10 °C. This highly cooperative
crystal-to-crystal transformation, which stems from the soft crystallinity of
ferritin-MOFs, illustrates the advantage of modular construction strategies in
discovering tunable-and unpredictable-material properties.