Novel Hybrid Nanomaterials : Combining Mesoporous Magnesium Carbonate with Metal-Organic Frameworks

Abstract: Nanotechnology as a field has the potential to answer some of the major challenges that mankind faces in regards to environmental sustainability, energy generation and health care. Though, solutions to these concerns can not necessarily rely on our current knowhow. Instead, it is reasonable to expect that humanity must adapt and learn to develop new materials and methods to overcome the adversities that we are facing. This master thesis has involved developing novel materials, serving as a small step in the continuous march towards a bright future where this is possible. More specifically, this work sought to combine mesoporous magnesium carbonate with various metal-organic frameworks to utilize the beneficial aspects from each of these constituents. The ambition was that these could be joined to render combined micro-/mesoporous core-shell structures, with high surface areas and many active sites whilst maintaining a good permeability. Numerous different synthesis routes were developed and explored in the pursuit of viable routes to design novel materials with potential future applications within for instance drug delivery, water harvesting from air and gas adsorption. Coreshell structures of the hydrophilic mesoporous magnesium carbonate covered with the hydrophobic zeolitic imidazole framework ZIF-8 was successfully synthesized for the first time, and practical studies demonstrated a dramatically enhanced water stability, which is perceived to have an impact on further research on these materials. ZIF-67 was also combined with mesoporous magnesium carbonate in a similar manner. Further, Mg-MOF-74 was grown directly from mesoporous magnesium carbonate, where the latter acted as a partially self-sacrificing template, with the aim of rendering a porous hierarchical structure with contributions from the micro- and mesoporous ranges. The outcomes of all these syntheses were characterized using several analyzing methods such as scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy and nitrogen sorption analysis.