Aerosol Synthesis of MOFs-based Functional Materials: Fundamentals and Applications

WEI-NING WANG, Virginia Commonwealth University

     Abstract Number: 17
     Working Group: Nanoparticles and Materials Synthesis

Abstract
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted much attention during the past years due to their unique properties, including tunable porous structure, high surface area, and rich surface chemistry. Endorsed by these features, MOFs find a variety of applications, such as gas capture and separation, catalysis, drug delivery, and sensing. MOFs are conventionally synthesized via wet-chemistry methods, such as hydrothermal and solvothermal methods, which, however, suffer from long reaction durations, inhomogeneous mixing, and limited batch processes. To address these issues, we have developed a microdroplet-based nanomanufacturing process to fabricate MOFs-based functional materials with controlled nanostructures in a rapid, continuous, and scalable manner. The mechanisms of rapid formation of MOFs inside the microdroplets were investigated by both experimental and theoretical approaches. Further, we have also developed strategies to integrate MOFs with semiconductors to form hybrid photocatalysts for various environmental applications, such as gas adsorption, CO₂ photoreduction, and pollutant degradation. The quantitative mechanisms of gas adsorption, activation, and charge transfer within the hybrid nanostructures were explored by various in-situ techniques, such as diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), coupled with density functional theory (DFT) calculations.