Hierarchical porous metal-organic frameworks/polymer microparticles for enhanced catalytic degradation of organic contaminants

Abstract

This work reports on a simple microfluidic strategy to controllably fabricate uniform polymeric microparticles containing hierarchical porous structures integrated with highly accessible catalytic metal organic frameworks for efficient degradation of organic contaminants. Monodisperse (W1/O)/W2 emulsion droplets generated from microfluidics are used as templates for the microparticle synthesis. The emulsion droplets contain tiny water microdroplets from homogenization and water nanodroplets from diffusion-induced swollen micelles as the dual pore-forming templates, and Fe-based metal-organic framework nanorods as the nanocatalysts. The obtained microparticles possess interconnected hierarchical porous structures decorated with highly accessible Fe-based metal-organic framework nanorods for enhanced degradation of organic contaminants via a heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction. Such a degradation performance is highlighted by using these microparticles for efficient degradation of rhodamine B in hydrogen peroxide solution. This work provides a simple and general strategy to flexibly combine hierarchical porous structures and catalytic metal-organic frameworks to engineer advanced microparticles for water decontamination.

Key words： metal-organic framework; polymer microparticle; nanocatalyst; decontamination; organic contaminant

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21922809, 22108186, and 21991101), and the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (Grant No. 2019YJ0528).

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