Synthesis and gas adsorption study of porous metal-organic framework materials

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or porous coordination polymers (PCPs) have become the focus of intense study over the past decade due to their potential for advancing a variety of applications including air purification, gas storage, adsorption separations, catalysis, gas sensing, drug delivery, and so on. These materials have some distinct advantages over traditional porous materials such as the well-defined structures, uniform pore sizes, chemically functionalized sorption sites, and potential for post-synthetic modification, etc. Thus, synthesis and adsorption studies of porous MOFs have increased substantially in recent years. Among various prospective applications, air purification is one of the most immediate concerns, which has urgent requirements to improve current nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) filters involving commercial and military purposes. Thus, the major goal of this funded project is to search, synthesize, and test these novel hybrid porous materials for adsorptive removal of toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) and chemical warfare agents (CWAs), and to install the benchmark for new-generation NBC filters. The objective of this study is three-fold: (i) Advance our understanding of coordination chemistry by synthesizing novel MOFs and characterizing these porous coordination polymers; (ii) Evaluate porous MOF materials for gas-adsorption applications including CO2 capture, CH4 storage, other light gas adsorption and separations, and examine the chemical and physical properties of these solid adsorbents including thermal stability and heat capacity of MOFs; (iii) Evaluate porous MOF materials for next-generation NBC filter media by adsorption breakthrough measurements of TICs on MOFs, and advance our understanding about structure-property relationships of these novel adsorbents.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Krista S. Walton; Committee Member: Carsten Sievers; Committee Member: Christopher W. Jones; Committee Member: Seth Marder; Committee Member: William J. Koro