Inorganic crystal engineering using self-assembly of tailored building-blocks

The use of transition metal complexes of bridging bidentate ligands to construct predictable, multi-dimensional infinite networks is an area of chemistry which has received ever-increasing attention over recent years. This article will review the advances that have been made in this field of research and will illustrate how ligand design and the properties of the transition metal and counter-anion can be used to control network geometry and thus crystal structure. The range of network topologies and structural motifs that have been constructed thus far will be outlined with particular emphasis upon how specific arrays can be prepared via rational design of molecular building-blocks. The unusual phenomenon of interpenetration, or polycatenation, will be discussed and methods to achieve control over this effect will be highlighted. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.