Tailoring Lewis/Brønsted acid properties of MOF nodesviahydrothermal and solvothermal synthesis: simple approach with exceptional catalytic implications

Abstract

The Lewis/Brønsted catalytic properties of the Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) nodes can be tuned by simply controlling the solvent employed in the synthetic procedure. In this work, we demonstrate that Hf-MOF-808 can be prepared from a material with a higher amount of Brønsted acid sites,viamodulated hydrothermal synthesis, to a material with a higher proportion of unsaturated Hf Lewis acid sites,viamodulated solvothermal synthesis. The Lewis/Brønsted acid properties of the resultant metallic clusters have been studied by different characterization techniques, including XAS, FTIR and NMR spectroscopies, combined with a DFT study. The different nature of the Hf-MOF-808 materials allows their application as selective catalysts in different target reactions requiring Lewis, Brønsted or Lewis-Brønsted acid pairs. ; This work has been supported by the Spanish Government through the "Severo Ochoa" (SEV-2016-0683, MINECO), MAT2017-82288-C2-1-P (AEI/FEDER, UE) and RTI2018-101033-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). J. M. Salas is acknowledged for his contribution to CD3CN-FTIR experiments. C. W. L. thanks the PRH 50.1 – ANP/FINEP Human Resources Program for the Visiting Researcher Fellowship. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a user facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, and was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 and by the Canadian Light Source and its funding partners. The Electron Microscopy Service of the UPV is also acknowledged for their help in sample characterization.