Articles Aluminum Phenylphosphonates: A Fertile Family of Compounds Aurelio Cabeza, ² Miguel A. G. Aranda, ² Sebastian Bruque,* Damodara M. Poojary, ‡,§ Abraham Clearfield, and Jesus Sanz | Departamento de Quı ´mica Inorga ´nica, Universidad de Ma ´laga, 29071 Ma ´laga, Spain, Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales, CSIC, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain ReceiVed March 5, 1998 Six aluminum phenylphosphonates have been synthesized depending upon the synthetic conditions: Al 2 (O 3 - PC 6 H 5 ) 3 2H 2 O(I), Al 2 (O 3 PC 6 H 5 ) 3 (II), R-Al(HO 3 PC 6 H 5 )(O 3 PC 6 H 5 )H 2 O(III), -Al(HO 3 PC 6 H 5 )(O 3 PC 6 H 5 )H 2 O (IV), Al(HO 3 PC 6 H 5 ) 3 H 2 O(V), and Al(OH)(O 3 PC 6 H 5 )(VI). Thermal analysis, X-ray powder thermodiffractometry, IR spectroscopy, and 27 Al and 31 P MAS NMR data have been obtained to study the structure and thermal stability of these materials. III crystallizes in the orthorhombic system, space group Pbca, with a ) 9.7952(1) Å, b ) 29.3878(4) Å, c ) 9.3537(3) Å, and Z ) 8. The structure was solved ab initio, from synchrotron data (λ 0.4 Å), using direct methods, and refined by Rietveld methods. The final agreement factors were R wP ) 6.73%, R P ) 5.24%, and R F ) 6.8%. The compound is layered with the aluminum atoms in an octahedral environment of oxygens and two crystallographically independent phosphonate groups, one being protonated. The powder patterns of V and VI have been indexed, and the experimental observations are consistent with layered structures. The unit cell of V contains one octahedral site for Al and three tetrahedral sites for P. Phosphonate I seems to have a three-dimensional tubular structure with aluminum atoms in both octahedral and tetrahedral environments and phosphorus atoms in three different types of sites. Introduction The metal phosphonates are a class of inorganic-organic hybrid materials, characterized by the presence of covalent bonds between the inorganic and organic moieties. In this family, the chemistry of metal phosphonates has received increasing attention for the last 15 years. The main research effort in the metal phosphonates field was initially directed toward tetravalent cations. A wide variety of tetravalent metal phosphonates (for instance, Zr, Ti, Sn, and Ce) have been known since the early 1980s. 1 The crystal structure of these materials was assumed to be related to that of R-zirconium phosphate, Zr(O 3 POH) 2 H 2 O. 2 Later, the structure of zirconium phenylphosphonate, Zr(O 3 PC 6 H 5 ) 2 , was solved from powder diffraction data 3 and the close relationship between the structures became clear. Many other investigations have been reported about the synthesis, crystal structures, and properties of divalent metal phospho- nates, 4-8 and more recently about trivalent metal phospho- nates. 7b,9,10 The general interest in the chemistry of metal organophosphonates is mainly due to the unusual compositional and structural diversity varying from one-dimensional arrange- ments to three-dimensional microporous frameworks, passing by the most common layered networks. The importance of such systems in several research areas such as electrochemistry, 11,12 microelectronics, 13 biological membranes, 14,15 photochemical mechanisms 16 and catalysis 17,18 has been widely recognized. Several studies of trivalent metal phenylphosphonates have been carried out. Two iron(III) derivatives, FeH(HO 3 PC 6 H 5 ) 4 and Fe(HO 3 PC 6 H 5 )(O 3 PC 6 H 5 )H 2 O, were synthesized, and the structure of the first compound was solved from single-crystal data. The main structural features are linear chains with iron * To whom correspondence should be addressed. ² Universidad de Ma ´laga. Texas A&M University. § Current address: Symyx Technologies, 3100 Central Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95051. | CSIC. (1) (a) Alberti, G.; Costantino, U.; Allulli, S.; Tomasini, N. J. Inorg. Nucl. Chem. 1978, 40, 1113. (b) Dines, M. B.; Giacomo, P. D. Inorg. Chem. 1981, 20, 92-97. (c) Drumel, S.; Penicaud, V.; Deniaud, D.; Bujoli, B. Trends Inorg. Chem. 1996, 4, 13-25. (d) Clearfield, A. In Progress in Inorganic Chemistry; Karlin, K. D.; Ed.; John Wiley: New York, 1998, pp 371-510. (2) Clearfield, A.; Troup, J. M. Inorg. Chem. 1977, 16, 3311-3314. (3) Poojary, D. M.; Hu, H.-L.; Campbell, F. L., III; Clearfield, A. Acta Crystallogr. 1993, B49, 996-1001. (4) Cunningham, D.; Hennelly, P. J.; Deeny, T. Inorg. Chim. Acta 1979, 37, 95-102. (5) Cao, G.; Lee, H.; Lynch, V. M.; Mallouk, T. E. Inorg. Chem. 1988, 27, 2781-2785. (6) Martin, K. J.; Squattrito, P. J.; Clearfield, A. Inorg. Chim. Acta 1988, 155,7-9. (7) (a) Cao, G.; Lee, H.; Lynch, V. M.; Mallouk, T. E. Solid State Ionics 1988, 26, 63-69. (b) Cao, G.; Lee, H.; Lynch, V. M.; Swinnea, J. S.; Mallouk, T. E. Inorg. Chem. 1990, 29, 2112-2117. (8) (a) Zhang, Y.; Clearfield, A. Inorg. Chem. 1992, 31, 2821-2826. (b) Bhardwaj, C.; Hu, H.-L.; Clearfield, A. Inorg. Chem. 1993, 32, 4294- 4299. (9) Bujoli, B.; Palvadeau, P.; Rouxel, J. Chem. Mater. 1990, 2, 582- 589. (10) Wang, R.; Zhang, Y.; Hu, H.; Frausto, R. R.; Clearfield A. Chem. Mater. 1992, 4, 864-871. (11) Murray, R. W. Acc. Chem. Res. 1980, 13, 135-141. (12) Facci, J. S. Langmuir 1987, 3, 525-530. 4168 Inorg. Chem. 1998, 37, 4168-4178 S0020-1669(98)00235-3 CCC: $15.00 © 1998 American Chemical Society Published on Web 08/06/1998