Amino (−NH2)-functionalized metal–organic
frameworks (MOFs) are widely applied to improve the properties of
materials owing to the rich host–guest chemical properties
of amino groups. In this work, the amino-functionalization strategy
was thus employed to improve the sorption performance of methylene
blue (MB). The introduction of −NH2 groups in AOBTC-Zn did not reduce the pore size of the framework but
rather modulated and optimized the host–guest interactions
of MOFs. The MB+ sorption result was significantly improved
by the NH2-functionalized NH2-AOBTC-Zn. The results showed that the maximum sorption capacity of NH2-AOBTC-Zn is much higher (1623 mg/g) than that
of AOBTC-Zn (204 mg/g), which was comparable with that
of MIL-68(Al) (1666 mg/g). The adsorption kinetics and isothermal
models indicated that the MB+ sorption processes of both
MOFs were consistent with the Langmuir isothermal and pseudo-second-order
kinetic models. The single-group and multicomponent sorption experiments
showed that the sorption behavior was the result of π–π
interaction, electrostatic interaction, hydrogen bonding interaction,
and pore size interaction. In particular, NH2-AOBTC-Zn exhibits a higher adsorption capacity than AOBTC-Zn due to the additional hydrogen bonding interactions it provided.
These may guide the design of porous MOFs with side group modification
for liquid phase sorption/separation.
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