Zinc saccharate: A robust, 3D coordination network with two types of isolated, parallel channels, one hydrophilic and the other hydrophobic

Abstract

A chessboard pattern: Saccharic acid, which could become a cheap chiral feedstock for possible "green" heterogeneous catalysts and sieves of the future, gives a robust crystalline zinc derivative, which is unusual in having within the same crystal structure two types of channels with very different characteristics: one hydrophilic, the other hydrophobic. These channels are isolated from each other by seemingly impenetrable walls, which produces, in projection, the pattern shown.