Spray synthesis of hierarchical porous metal-organic framework HKUST-1 with soft templates and methylene blue adsorption performance

Abstract

We synthesize hierarchical porous HKUST-1 (HP-HKUST-1) with micropores, mesopores, and macropores using the spray synthesis and soft template methods. We utilize two types of structure-directing agents (SDAs), namely cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and citric acid for C-HKUST-1 and triblock copolymer P123 for P-HKUST-1. Paq-HKUST-1 is successfully synthesized using only water as the solvent. The volumes of the mesopores and macropores are changed by the amounts of SDAs. The highest values are: 0.78 and 0.30 cm3/g for C-HKUST-1; 0.44 and 0.38 cm3/g for P-HKUST-1; and 0.30 and 0.23 cm3/g for Paq-HKUST-1, respectively. HP-HKUST-1 shows high methylene blue (MB) adsorption rates and capacities of over 700 mg/g owing to its HP structure. In particular, C-HKUST-1 exhibits a rate constant of 19.7 mg/mg min for MB adsorption based on the pseudo-second-order adsorption kinetic model. This rate constant is 10 times higher than that of batch-synthesized HKUST-1. Furthermore, HP-HKUST-1 exhibits good stability for reuse as an MB adsorbent.