The article describes, for the first time, a strategy for designing open architectures using the sulfate tetrahedron as a building unit. Such structures involving sulfates were themselves unknown at that time. The method may generate new classes of materials.

Our ability to build up 3D structures with channels and other features employing common inorganic anions, such as the sulfate, opens up this area of research and creates new synthetic possibilities for materials with potential applications.

I was working on open architectures employing metal phosphates and carboxylates. The systems were fairly well known, but not the sulfates. So I asked myself, "Why not sulfates and selenates?"