Syntheses and functional studies of advanced porous materials apms a promising platform for aquatic pollutant remediation and energy applications

Abstract

Development of advanced porous materials (APMs) including Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs), Metal-organic Polyhedra (MOP), and others, has progressed fast during recent two decades, particularly in the fields of energy and environmental applications. MOFs, being crystalline solids made up of organic ligands held together in an ordered manner by metal nodes, have evolved as a distinct class of porous materials, and are being explored for a variety of applications including gas storage, separation, hazardous oxo-ion remediation, ion-conduction, catalysis, and so on. This diverse applicability is attributed to features that enable tunable architectures and altering chemical/physical properties on demand at the molecular level. Recently, MOFs drew attention as functionally interesting materials for the challenging task of selective, efficient remediation of environmentally hazardous contaminants including hazardous oxo-ions, organic medical and pharmaceutical pollutants, as well as separation of important light hydrocarbons and greenhouse gases. This work has sparked widespread global interest and invites further comprehensive explorations. Hereof we sought to elucidate the design principles influencing formation of stable O and N-donor linker based MOFs by deploying linker with higher denticity. Polydentate linkers; carboxylate-based linker s additionally bearing N-donor sites have been used in the synthesis offering diverse alternatives to build functional MOFs are explored. Such linkers facilitate formation of anionic frameworks coupled with extra functionality through exchangeable uncoordinated cations within the porous cavity of the framework. Design strategies were centered on building compounds that were specifically targeted for the remediation of hazardous pollutants including heavy metal oxo-cations, radioactive species (via surrogate cations), antibiotics and pesticides via ion-exchange pathway and compounds with polar sites for the adsorption of hydrocarbon and greenhouse gas. Separately, addressing the