Abstract
The development of simple, versatile strategies for the synthesis of metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived membranes are of increasing scientific interest, but challenges exist in understanding suitable fabrication mechanisms. Here we report a route for the complete transformation of a series of MOF membranes and particles, based on multivalent cation substitution. Through our approach, the effective pore size can be reduced through the immobilization of metal salt residues in the cavities, and appropriate MOF crystal facets can be exposed, to achieve competitive molecular sieving capabilities. The method can also be used more generally for the synthesis of a variety of MOF membranes and particles. Importantly, we design and synthesize promising MOF membranes candidates that are hard to achieve through conventional methods. For example, our CuBTC/MIL-100 membrane exhibits 89, 171, 241 and 336 times higher H2 permeance than that of CO2, O2, N2 and CH4, respectively.
Highlights
The development of simple, versatile strategies for the synthesis of metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived membranes are of increasing scientific interest, but challenges exist in understanding suitable fabrication mechanisms
We report a methodology for realizing the connection and complete transformation of different series of MOF membranes and particles based on multivalent cation substitution
This strategy combines three key concepts: (i) facile transformation of unstable and fabricated MOF particles to obtain the stable MOFs with completely different topology structure, which are usually fabricated in a relatively harsh synthetic conditions; (ii) in situ transformation of one common MOF membrane to another MOF membrane, which is hard to be synthesized in conventional methods at present; (iii) reducing the pore size through immobilizing the metal salt residue in cavities and exposing the appropriate crystal facets of the MOFs to achieve competitive molecular sieving ability by the transformation of MOF membranes
Summary
The development of simple, versatile strategies for the synthesis of metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived membranes are of increasing scientific interest, but challenges exist in understanding suitable fabrication mechanisms. Our strategy can be used more generally to various MOF membranes and particles, but we exhibit our key findings here with two examples, one is the transformation of CuBTC to MIL-100, which takes the advantages of easy preparation and material stability[18,19,20]. Some monovalent and divalent cations were employed to transform CuBTC, the result revealed that the MOF crystal structure had not been changed (Supplementary Fig. 3).
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