H2 production in a promising porous tunable material

What is it about?

A metal-organic framework (MOF) material, formed by metal clusters linked by organic molecules, was chemically modified replacing the linkers with di-iron molecules. Under light irradiation, and in the presence of a molecular dye and a sacrificial electron donor, the latter construct can produce H2. THe production of H2, however, stops after a few minutes. In this work, we try to understand the origin of this production cease and we show that it is possible to recover the production by simple mixing, We propose this phenomena is caused by the reshuffling of the organic linkers in the MOF, which exchanges degraded di-iron molecules at the surface by active ones.

Featured Image

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a newly developed group of materials. Because they are porous and are easy to recover from reaction solutions, many potential applications have been considered. One of these applications is catalysis, the field of chemistry concerned with accelerating chemical reactions with mediating compounds (i.e., catalysts) that do not degrade during the process. The organic linkers of MOFs can be easily modified to have a specific chemical reactivity, and their porosity facilitates the exposure of these linkers to the surrounding. However, few examples of MOFs functionalised as catalysts exist and they are not well understood. In this work, we try to better understand one MOF functionalised to produce H2 from water which shows an unusual behaviour.