Altering elastic-plastic mechanical response of a series of isostructural metal-organic complex crystals

The mechanically compliant single crystals have attracted massive attention. However, the related reports on the single crystals composed of metal-organic complexes remain scarce. In this study, we synthesized a series of isostructural single crystals of Zn^II complexes that manifest mechanical bending in response to external stress. In these crystals, the mechanical responses can be shifted between elastic bending and plastic bending by the control of the intermolecular interactions through a rational structural modification in the substituent group of pyridine ligands. As the molecular reorientation corresponding to ligand variation elongates the interfacial distance between molecular slip planes, and the structural disorder of ligands disperses the interplanar intermolecular interactions, the shift from elastic bending to plastic bending of the metal-organic complex-based single crystal was realized. The different mechanical responses of single crystals were comprehensively investigated both experimentally and theoretically. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]