Metal Organic Frameworks for Fibre Interfacial Engineering and Functional Textiles

Abstract

There has seen tremendous growth in the research field of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) during the past two decades. However, MOFs are commonly in powder form and hard to meet the requirement of target applications. Current research methods of MOFs are mostly coupling with metal/polymers, while the integration of MOFs into alternative materials still have a great potential to be explored. Textiles are powerful candidates to combine with MOFs, which are manufactured worldwide every day and can be seen everywhere in our lives. They possess the characteristics of large surface areas, tuneable fabric thickness and suitable aspect ratios, which can provide comfortability and human protection as support platforms to help improve the weakness of MOFs after combination. Human metabolism generates unpleasure smell, which causes embarrassment or failure during social occasions even under the cover of perfume. The main source of such smell is from H2S and other sulphur-based composites and no well-developed product is available as a solution Hereby, MOF zeolitic imidazolate framework-8(ZIF-8) was successfully fabricated on the surface of cotton fibre with uniform coating morphology. The H2S gas absorption process was monitored by TGA and the results showed up to 15-20% wt absorption of H2S gas in 3 h, along with ~34% mass loading of ZIF-8. The amount of absorbed H2S was equal to about 40% mass of ZIF-8 coated. The ZIF-8/Cotton hybrid fibre showed great potential to absorb H2S on applications of wearable garments and protective textiles. MOF/Fibre composites were also explored and used as fibre sensors to detect hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), which is commonly used chemical in industry but it could be dangerous and toxic within certain concentration range. In this study, a new X-MOF/Carbon Fibre (X represents Ni and Co) has been successfully fabricated to monitor 0 to 200μM H2O2 inside water medium with accuracy at the change of 0.001μA each 50μM H2O2. This shows a great potential for relevant H2O2 sensors based on MOF.

Date of Award	6 Jan 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Anura Fernando (Supervisor), Xuqing Liu (Supervisor) & Shaojun Xu (Supervisor)