Universal, controllable, large-scale and facile fabrication of nano-MOFs tightly-bonded on flexible substrate

Abstract

Nanoscale metal-organic frameworks (nanoMOFs) are promising materials for many applications. However, for actual applications, it is a big challenge to change the brittle MOFs into flexible materials suitable for universal, large-scale fabrication. Herein, we develop a facile, universal, controllable, large-scale strategy to fabricate the tightly-bonded and flexible nanoMOFs-based composites by flexibly controlling the nucleation and growth of nanoMOFs. Based on this universal strategy, a series of tightly-bonded and flexible nanoMOFs@carboxymethylated filter paper (nanoMOFs@CMFP) are successfully prepared under mild conditions. Specifically, the retention of ZIF-67 on the ZIF-67@CMFP is still up to 93.87% after the mechanical deformation and abrasion (200 cycles), which confirms the flexibility and ultra-stability of nanoMOFs@CMFP. Moreover, besides the universal applicability, this method also can be used for large-scale synthesis of flexible nanoMOFs@CMFP. Furthermore, the excellent performance of low toxicity, antibacterial and wound healing confirms that the flexible composites have practical application value. Therefore, this study is expected to solve the problem of the flexible use of nanoMOFs in the practical application.