Speaker
Jon Thai
Speaker's Institution
Colorado State University
Date
2021-04-23
Time
4:00 PM
Location
Mixer Time
Mixer Time
Calendar (ICS) Event
Additional Information

Research Seminar:

Metal-organic framework (MOF) nanosheets are promising materials for applications in heterogeneous catalysis as a greater proportion of their active metal sites are positioned on the exterior surface of the MOF relative to other particle morphologies.  Due to these limitations caused by substrate diffusion into MOF pores, my research efforts are focused towards developing strategies to synthesize MOF nanosheets.  With a greater number of metal sites on the exterior surface of the particle, they will be more easily accessible to substrates with limited or no diffusion into the pores of the MOF.  While most Cu-based MOFs are commonly known to be unstable in aqueous solutions, H3[(Cu4Cl)3(BTTri)8 or CuBTTri (where H3BTTri = 1,3,5-tris(1H1,2,3,-triazol-5-yl)benzene) is an established Cu-based MOF with octahedral particle geometry, that is capable of catalyzing chemical reactions that is known to be stable in water.  Using a three-layer bottom-up method and a solvothermal method, a new MOF, CuBDTri (where H2BDTri = 1,4-di(1H-1,2,3-triazol-5-yl)benzene) was produced.  Substituting the H3BTTri linker for H2BDTri helps promote anisotropic growth of the CuBDTri MOF particles with nanosheet morphologies. Our group has recently reported that only 1.3±0.4% of the total Cu in CuBTTri are active for the catalytic generation of nitric oxide (NO) in water because the catalysis is completely confined to the exterior surface metal sites of the CuBTTri particles.  Preliminary catalytic studies have already shown that the CuBDTri MOF nanosheets exhibit greater catalytic activity on a per-total-Cu-atom basis that CuBTTri octahedra, indicating that a greater proportion of the Cu sites in CuBDTri nanosheets are catalytically active.  This suggests that the CuBDTri MOF nanosheets we designed and synthesized are more efficient than CuBTTri, while still retaining its water stability.  Currently, our work has shown that the CuBDTri MOFs that we have designed and synthesized are crystalline, porous, water-stable, and catalytically active in H2O.

Ultimately, the goal of this research is to improve copper catalysis using MOFs in water-stable environments to increase their efficiency when used in medical devices.  Future studies will focus on determining the structure and fully investigating the catalytic activity of the CuBDTri MOF nanosheets.  As this is a completely novel material, to determine structure, high resolution pXRD and electron diffraction will be used, and the data obtained will be used to guide the next steps.  To investigate the catalytic activity of the CuBDTri MOF nanosheets, some experiments will include catalyst poisoning and kinetic studies to identify and quantify the active, exterior surface of the CuBDTri nanosheets.  With this data, we will be able to properly compare the catalytic efficiency of the CuBDTri MOF nanosheets more thoroughly to CuBTTri MOF.

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Meeting ID:  938 2067 0166