Metal carbonyl cluster-based coordination polymers: Diverse syntheses, versatile network structures, and special properties

The incorporation of metal carbonyl clusters into the backbone of coordination polymers represents an important field in contemporary chemistry. The development of metal carbonyl cluster-based polymers with or without inorganic/organic linkers is not only a challenging issue but also an opportunity for discovering novel types of materials, due to the intrinsic chemical/physical properties, versatile networks, and potential applications of these types of materials. This review provides an overview of recent developments in groups 6-10 carbonyl cluster-based coordination polymers, and in particular, focuses on polymers that are produced starting from pre-synthesized metal carbonyl clusters. This highlight presents a review and discussion of recent progress from our group as well as others, the diverse synthetic strategies for preparing such polymers, versatile network structures, structural transformations, and semiconducting and magnetic properties as well as other applications.