Design and Synthesis of Supported Nanoscale Metal–Organic Frameworks: Transformation from Transition Metal Silicates

Abstract

Size control over metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has been an important topic for this class of solid-state supramolecular materials. Herein, utilizing copper silicate as a solid metal source for the first time, we developed a novel environmentally friendly method to synthesize ultrasmall (5–9 nm) HKUST-1 nanoparticles supported on copper silicate nanotubes. Furthermore, by doping copper silicate nanotubes with other transition metal ions, many types of ultrasmall MOF nanoparticles (e.g., ZIF-8, ZIF-67, etc.) can be attained using the same approach. Compared with microsized MOFs synthesized through solution reaction from metal salts, these ultrasmall MOFs show extraordinary performance on organic dye adsorption. This research further sheds insight into the growth mechanism of MOF crystals using solid matters as metal sources, which allow us to employ ecofriendly feature from this general synthetic approach to construct intricate MOF nanocomposites.