Biomineralization-mimetic growth of ultrahigh-load metal-organic frameworks on inert glass fibers to prepare hybrid membranes for collecting organic hazards in unconventional environment

Abstract Exploring new membrane matrices with demanding functions but inert surficial properties to prepare hybrid membranes is challenging. Inspired by biomineralization, we proposed a strategy to grow pristine and ultrahigh-load metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) on inert glass fibers (GF) to prepare GF@MOFs (ZIF-8) hybrid membranes to efficiently collect organic hazardous substance in conventional and unconventional solutions. Comparing with the poor coverage of the MOFs using the conventional method, this new method induced an ultra-high load of MOFs, and even interesting intergrown-particle-, sheet-flower- and grain-like shapes. The GF@ZIFs exhibited adsorbability of malachite green up to 3964.8 mg g-1, whereas that of the reported analogues only reached 1667 mg g-1. The hybrid membranes also exhibited adsorption capability of 192.2 mg g-1 to tetracycline.. More importantly, having benefited from the introduction of robust GF matrices, the robustness of the GF@ZIFs was significantly enhanced: synergetic effect derived from the GF and MOFs could be observed. Furthermore, all three types of GF@ZIFs presented well-maintained performance in 70-°C hot water, chloroform, and pH 14 NaOH solution, which are generally nonadoptive to conventional hybrid membranes. The GF@ZIF membranes were further developed as a filter device for rapid collection of over 95% malachite green (50 mg·L-1, 10 mL) in 1 h. The proposed method could create a new direction for exploring new types of matrices to fabricate hybrid materials.