Self-Assembled MOF-on-MOF Nanofabrics for Synergistic Detoxification of Chemical Warfare Agent Simulants
Ran Xu, Ting Wu, Xiuling Jiao, Dairong Chen, Cheng Li
Abstract
The development of protective fabrics that are capable of capturing and detoxifying a wide range of lethal chemical warfare agents (CWAs) in an efficient way is of great importance for individual protection gears/clothing. In this work, unique metal–organic framework (MOF)-on-MOF nanofabrics were fabricated through facile self-assembly of UiO-66-NH 2 and MIL-101(Cr) crystals on electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofabrics and exhibited intriguing synergistic effects between the MOF composites on the detoxification of both nerve agent and blistering agent simulants. MIL-101(Cr), although not catalytic, facilitates the enrichment of CWA simulants from solution or air, thereby delivering a high concentration of reactants to catalytic UiO-66-NH 2 coated on its surface and providing an enlarged contact area for CWA simulants with the Zr 6 nodes and aminocarboxylate linkers compared to solid substrates. Consequently, the as-prepared MOF-on-MOF nanofabrics showed a fast hydrolysis rate ( t 1/2 = 2.8 min) for dimethyl 4-nitrophenylphosphate (DMNP) in alkaline solutions and a high removal rate (90% within 4 h) of 2-(ethylthio)-chloroethane (CEES) under environmental conditions, considerably surpassing their single-MOF counterparts and the mixture of two MOF nanofabrics. This work demonstrates synergistic detoxification of CWA simulants using MOF-on-MOF composites for the first time and has the potential to be extended to other MOF/MOF pairs, which provides new ideas for the development of highly efficient toxic gas-protective materials.