Understanding Solvothermal Growth of Metal–Organic Framework Colloids for CO₂ Capture Applications

A quantitative study of the synthesis of metal–organic framework (MOF) colloids via a solvothermal growth process was demonstrated using electrospray-differential mobility analysis (ES-DMA), a gas-phase electrophoresis approach. HKUST-1, a copper-based MOF (Cu-MOF), was selected as the representative MOF of the study. The effects of the synthetic parameters, including ligand concentration ( C BTC ), synthetic temperature ( T s ), and synthetic time ( t s ) versus material properties of the Cu-MOF, were successfully characterized based on the mobility size distributions measured by ES-DMA. The results show that the mobility size of Cu-MOF was proportional to T s, t s, and C BTC during the solvothermal growth. X-ray diffraction and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analyses were employed complementarily to the ES-DMA, confirming that the increase in mobility size of Cu-MOF was correlated to the increase in crystallinity (i.e., larger specific surface area and crystallite size). The results of CO 2 pulse adsorption show that the synthesized Cu-MOF possessed a good CO 2 adsorption ability under 1 atm, 35 °C, and the cumulative amount of CO 2 uptake was proportional to the measured mobility size of Cu-MOF. The work provides a proof of concept for the controlled synthesis of MOF colloids with the support of gas-phase electrophoretic analysis, and the quantitative methodology is useful for the development of MOF-based applications in CO 2 capture and utilization.