Colloid-Milling Enforcing Nucleation–Growth Separation for Scaling-Up Synthesis of Nanosized Metal–Organic Frameworks

Nanosized metal–organic frameworks (nano-MOFs) have shown significant potential across diverse fields, while the challenge of achieving energy- and time-efficient scaling-up synthesis hampers their practical applications. This work presents a cost-effective colloid-milling method that enforces nucleation–growth separation during crystallization for the scalable synthesis of nano-MOFs under ambient conditions. Compared to the static method, the colloid-milling method not only greatly improves the production efficiency by 2 orders of magnitude but also produces smaller nano-MOFs with narrower size distribution that exhibit higher catalytic activity than the larger-sized ones. This work offers a promising option for the large-scale production of nano-MOFs.