An in situ self-assembly template strategy for the preparation of hierarchical-pore metal-organic frameworks

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 8847
• Main Authors: Huang, Hongliang, Li, Jian-Rong, Wang, Keke, Han, Tongtong, Tong, Minman, Li, Liangsha, Xie, Yabo, Yang, Qingyuan, Liu, Dahuan, Zhong, Chongli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.11.2015; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Pub. Group
• Subjects: 639/301/299/921; 639/301/923/966; 639/638/263/914; Acids; Adsorption; Catalysis; Humanities and Social Sciences; Ligands; Methods; multidisciplinary; Pore size; Porous materials; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Surfactants; Beijing China; China
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9847

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently emerged as a new type of nanoporous materials with tailorable structures and functions. Usually, MOFs have uniform pores smaller than 2 nm in size, limiting their practical applications in some cases. Although a few approaches have been adopted to prepare MOFs with larger pores, it is still challenging to synthesize hierarchical-pore MOFs (H-MOFs) with high structural controllability and good stability. Here we demonstrate a facile and versatile method, an in situ self-assembly template strategy for fabricating stable H-MOFs, in which multi-scale soluble and/or acid-sensitive metal-organic assembly (MOA) fragments form during the reactions between metal ions and organic ligands (to construct MOFs), and act as removable dynamic chemical templates. This general strategy was successfully used to prepare various H-MOFs that show rich porous properties and potential applications, such as in large molecule adsorption. Notably, the mesopore sizes of the H-MOFs can be tuned by varying the amount of templates. The synthesis of porous materials with hierarchically-sized pores is an attractive target for a variety of applications. Here, the authors employ in situ generated metal-organic assemblies as metal-organic framework templates which, upon removal, yield single mesoporous-microporous materials.