Supramolecular structural transformations involving coordination polymers in the solid state

Structural changes are accompanied by the movements of atoms/molecules and hence transformation of one structure to another is difficult in the solid state due to the restricted movements of molecules. While single-crystal to single-crystal conversion is more convenient way of characterizing the structures in the solid state by X-ray crystallography, the single crystalline nature of coordination polymers may not be always retained during structural transformations, since breaking and forming of coordinate and/or covalent bonds occur in more than one direction. X-ray powder diffraction techniques, thermoanalytical methods, solid-state NMR spectroscopy may be used to extract structural information in the topochemical reactions. This review describes a personal account of the structural transformations involving coordination polymers in the solid state along with other relevant and interesting examples from the literature. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.