The flexible metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) materials, also called soft porous crystals which combine the crystalline order of the underlying coordination network with cooperative structural transformability, have been extensively studied as promising materials for various applications such as sensing, drug delivery, catalysis, host-guest complex etc. Among them MOFs is effectively used as a carrier for drug delivery. Herein, a flexible metal-organic framework MIL-53(Fe) functionalized with polyethyleneglycol (PEG) was successfully fabricated by ultrasonication. The prepared material was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmittance electron microscopy (TEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area and infrared spectroscopy (IR). The effect of the PEG content on the morphology and particles size of the MIL-53 was investigated in detail. The resultant flexible MIL-53(Fe)-PEG materials were seen to be homogeneous with the morphology of hexagonal bipyramidal structure, approximately 700 nm in length and 400 nm in diameter. Furthermore, we investigated loading of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) drug and its release in vitro conditions by employing MIL-53(Fe)-PEG. The results showed that in vitro condition, only 31% of the drug released after 3 h, and released completely after approximately 6 days. Thus, we believe that use of MIL-53(Fe)-PEG may overcome current issue of sustain release.[a] Prof.

Metal oxides and their composites have been extensively studied as effective adsorbents for the removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions in environmental remediation. In this work, Cu 0.5 Mg 0.5 Fe 2 O 4 was synthesized by a co-precipitation method followed by calcination (900 °C) and investigated for Pb(II) adsorption. The resultant samples were characterized by various analytical techniques including X-ray diffraction, N 2 adsorption−desorption, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results revealed that single-phase cubic spinel was obtained by the calcination of assynthesized samples at a temperature of 900 °C. Cu 0.5 Mg 0.5 Fe 2 O 4 ferrite is a mesoporous material with a surface area, a total pore volume, and an average pore size of 41.3 m 2 /g, 0.2 cm 3 /g, and 15.1 nm, respectively. Pb(II) adsorption on Cu 0.5 Mg 0.5 Fe 2 O 4 fitted well to the Langmuir model, indicating monolayer adsorption with a maximum capacity of 57.7 mg/g. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model can exactly describe Pb(II) adsorption with the normalized standard deviation (Δq) of 1.24%. The obtained results confirmed that the Cu 0.5 Mg 0.5 Fe 2 O 4 ternary oxides exhibit a high adsorption capacity toward Pb(II), thanks to the increase in active adsorptive sites of ferrite.

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The solar spectrum consists of 8% UV radiation, while 45% of solar energy is from visible light. It is therefore desirable to fabricate a hybrid material which is able to harvest energy from a wide range of photons from the sun for applications such as solar cells, photovoltaics, and photocatalysis. In this study we report on the fabrication of a TiO2@porphyrin hybrid material by surfactant-assisted co-assembly of monomeric porphyrin molecules with TiO2 nanoparticles. The obtained TiO2@porphyrin composite shows excellent integration of TiO2 particles with diameters of 15–30 nm into aggregated porphyrin nanofibers, which have a width of 70–90 nm and are several µm long. SEM, XPS, XRD, FTIR, UV–Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy were employed to characterize the TiO2@TCPP hybrid material. This material exhibits efficient photocatalytic performance under simulated sunlight, due to synergistic photocatalytic activities of the porphyrin aggregates in visible light and TiO2 particles in the UV region. A plausible mechanism for photocatalytic degradation is also proposed and discussed.

A one-pot hydrothermal method to prepare a graphene@Fe–Mg–Cu ternary oxide composite and the proposed adsorption mechanism for removal of Pb(ii) ions.