Flexible MOF@fabrics composites: The in-situ growth of metal-organic frameworks on cotton and selectively adsorption of gold(III) from aqueous solution

Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) show great potential applications in dealing with heavy metal pollution due to their unique large specific surface area, tunable pore size, and diverse active groups. However, the powder form of MOFs has suffered from the disadvantages of difficult recycling and secondary contamination after adsorption of heavy metals, which seriously limits their practical application. Therefore, in this work, we prepared a series of bifunctional zirconium-based MOFs cotton fabric composites (MCFC) via in situ growth of MOFs on carboxylated cotton fabric, exhibiting large specific surface area, adjustable pore size, and effective adsorption ability. The prepared CF-UiO-66-(OH)₂-FA shows an excellent adsorption efficiency of Au(III) more than 99.990 %, and the saturated adsorption amount is up to 190.98 mg·g⁻¹ at 25 °C. Meanwhile, the kinetic experiment analysis demonstrated that the Au(III) adsorption behavior of MCFC follows pseudo-second-order (PSO) kinetic model. More importantly, it also exhibits great selectivity in adsorbing Au(III) from the mixture of multiple metal ions coexisted solution. The results of adsorption thermodynamics and adsorption isotherms indicate that adsorption is monolayer and a spontaneous, exothermic process. And the ideal adsorption and separation process could be finished by quickly filtrating with a single or multi-layer MCFC. Excellent adsorption performance even after four cycles of adsorption. Therefore, the fabricated MCFC shows great processability, flexibility, collectability and reusability in adsorbing and recycling precious metal ion from wastewater.