The potential applications of metal-organic cages (MOCs) are mostly achieved through the specific host-guest interaction within their cavities. Electronic applications would require an effective electron transportation pathway, which have been extensively studied in hybrid organic-inorganic materials with extended structures. These properties have not been considered for MOCs because cage-to-cage interaction in these materials is rarely examined and is challenging to be functionalized. We report here a previously unobserved actinide based MOC, assembled from four hexagonal bipyramid coordinated uranyl ions and six bidentate flexible ligands. Remarkably, each isolated cage is further interlocked with six adjacent ones through mechanical bonds, weaving into the first case of (0D→3D) f-element polycatenated metal-organic cage (SCU-14). Long-range π-π stacking extending throughout the structure is built via polycatenation, providing a visible carrier transmission path. SCU-14 is also an extremely rare case of intrinsically semiconductive MOC with a wide bandgap of 2.61 eV. Combined with the high X-ray attenuation efficiency, SCU-14 can effectively convert X-ray photons to electrical current signals, and presents a promising sensitivity of 54.93 μC Gy-1 cm-2.

中文翻译：

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铀基金属有机笼的三维多链化：结构复杂性和辐射检测

金属有机笼 (MOC) 的潜在应用主要是通过其空腔内特定的主客体相互作用来实现的。电子应用需要有效的电子传输途径，这已在具有扩展结构的混合有机-无机材料中得到广泛研究。MOC 尚未考虑这些特性，因为这些材料中的笼与笼相互作用很少被研究，并且很难被功能化。我们在这里报告了以前未观察到的基于锕系元素的 MOC，它由四个六方双锥配位的铀酰离子和六个双齿柔性配体组装而成。值得注意的是，每个孤立的笼子通过机械结合进一步与六个相邻的笼子互锁，编织成第一个（0D→3D）f-元素多链金属有机笼（SCU-14）。延伸到整个结构的远程 π-π 堆叠是通过多链构建的，提供了可见的载流子传输路径。SCU-14 也是一种极为罕见的本征半导体 MOC，具有 2.61 eV 的宽带隙。结合高X射线衰减效率，SCU-14可以有效地将X射线光子转换为电流信号，灵敏度为54.93 μC Gy-1 cm-2。