Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as an important class of hybrid organic-inorganic materials. One of the reasons they have gained remarkable attention is attributed to the possibility of altering them by postsynthetic modification, thereby providing access to new and novel advanced materials. MOFs have been applied in catalysis, gas storage, gas separation, chemical sensing, and drug delivery. However, their bactericidal use has rarely been explored. Herein, we developed a two-step process for the synthesis of zirconium-based MOFs metalated with silver cations as a potent antibacterial agent. The obtained products were thoroughly characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, UV-visible, IR, thermogravimetric, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analyses. Their potency was evaluated against E. coli with a reported minimal inhibitory concentration and minimal bactericidal concentration of as low as 6.5 μg/mL of silver content. Besides the novelty of the system, the advantage of this strategy is that the MOFs could be potentially regenerated and remetalated after each antibacterial test, unlike previously reported frameworks, which involved the destruction of the framework.

Current research on metal−organic framework (MOF) luminescent sensing probes focuses on the design of three-dimensional bulk-sized MOFs that in return limits their up-close interactions with targeted guest molecules. In this work, we report a two-dimensional (2D) copper-based metal− organic framework, namely, AUBM-6, synthesized via solvothermal method from isonicotinic acid linker and copper(II) ion. The resulting 2D-layered MOF crystals were highly fluorescent in their exfoliated form and, therefore, explored for detecting several solvents, where a ratiometric selectivity was shown toward acetone. Metal ion sensing was also performed, by which fluorescent detection was observed to have the highest turn-off quenching efficiency toward Pd 2+ .

Designing molecular glasses with phenyl rings favors a lower Tg and higher glass stability compared to cyclohexyl analogues.

The development of an economically viable technology for recycling polystyrene (PS) is of crucial importance. Most postconsumer PS feedstocks cannot be handled by mechanical recycling due to severe contamination. A solvent-based process was developed by Polystyvert and uses p-cymene as a solvent to solubilize PS and heptane as an antisolvent to precipitate it. This leads to the production of recycled PS resin of high purity. However, the optimization of this process requires the knowledge of p-cymene, heptane, and PS concentrations at different stages, where the samples of interest can be a viscoelastic paste or a solid (pellets). Here, we present an infrared spectroscopy (IR) method that can rapidly quantify the content of these samples at the plant level. Partial least squares statistical modeling on the first derivative IR spectra allowed the simultaneous quantification of the components with a limit of quantification of 0.5% and 1% for p-cymene and heptane. To illustrate the usefulness of this method, samples from a pilot PS-recycling plant were tested to improve the washing efficiency of the process.