Functionality tailored porous materials toward detection and sequestration of toxic pollutants.

Abstract

The main motivation of all the works included in this thesis is to design and synthesize of functional porous materials for different sustainable applications. In the domain of porous materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are made of metal-ligand coordination bond and porous organic materials linked in covalent linkages between functional moieties. The primary benefits of these materials are their synthetic tuneability, which results in the development of pores within and enables the materials to function as host matrix. The pores can be designed with required functional groups, which can produce an exceptional host-guest interaction. In the case of neutral framework material, the pores are inhabited by guest molecules and in the case of ionic frameworks there are counter ions. Because of these characteristics, porous materials have become one of the frontrunners in the domain of material science having application in gas separation, heterogeneous catalysis, drug delivery etc. However, using MOFs and porous organic materials for recognition and sequestration of toxic and harmful species from water has been rarely investigated. In this context functionalized metal organic framework was developed for selective recognition of cyanide ion in water medium. Furthermore, based on principles of ion exchange and host guest interaction functionalized porous organic materials were developed for capture of hazardous water pollutants.