Raman scattering spectra of boron imidazolate frameworks containing different magnetic ions

We present a Raman scattering spectroscopic study of boron imidazolate metal-organic frameworks (BIFs) with three different magnetic metal ions and one non-magnetic in a wide frequency range from 25 to 1700 cm⁻¹, which covers local vibrations of the imidazolate linkers as well as collective lattice vibrations. We show that the spectral region above 800 cm⁻¹ belongs to the local vibrations of the linkers, which have the same frequencies for the studied BIFs without any dependence on the structure of the BIFs and are easily interpreted based on the spectra of imidazolate linkers. In contrast, collective lattice vibrations, observed below 100 cm⁻¹, show a distinction between cage and two-dimensional BIFs structures, with a weak dependence on the metal node. We identify the range of vibrations around 200 cm⁻¹, which are distinct for each metal-organic framework, depending on a metal node. Our work demonstrates the energy hierarchy in the vibrational response of BIFs.