Cobalt Complex of Metal–Organic Framework as an Efficient Visible-Light Photocatalyst for Oxidation of Alcohols

Over the past two decades, the literature on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has increased rapidly. MOFs are a class of crystalline materials formed by transition metal-containing clusters as structural nodes bridged by organic linkers. Their intriguing aesthetic structures and outstanding properties such as high pore volume, high specific surface area, structural flexibility have led to the successful application of MOFs in gas adsorption, separation, chemical sensing, linear optical properties, as well as catalysis [1,2]. Recently, some attempts have been made to explore the potential of MOFs as a new class of photocatalysts. Of note, compared with the traditional photocatalysts, the superiority of MOFs is that the band gap which is closely related to the HOMO–LUMO gap, may be flexibly tuned by simply varying the connector and functionality of the organic linker. This would have a great influence on the optical absorption properties of the MOFs [3,4]. Despite the rapidly growing interest in MOFs, their photocatalytic performances have yet to be fully exploited.In this article, Co-complex of metal-organic framework (MIL-101) was synthesized and characterized by a variety of techniques, including FT-IR, XRD, TGA, XPS, BET and ICP-OES analysis. This newly synthesized MOF was used successfully as a heterogeneous photocatalyst for the selective oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes under visible-light irradiation.

Keywords:

Metal-organic frameworks , Oxidation , Photocatalysis , Visible-light