Metal–Organic Frameworks in Electrochemistry and Electrocatalysis

Duan, Jiaxin

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-kf7k-2q85

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Metal–Organic Frameworks in Electrochemistry and Electrocatalysis

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Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) is a class of material comprising organic linkers and inorganic, metal-ion-containing nodes, with diverse functionalities and wide-range of applications. Because of their porous nature and functional nodes and linkers, they are competent candidates for gas storage, separation, catalysis, and so on. Most MOFs, however, are intrinsically insulating, which impose challenges in using MOFs as efficient electrocatalysts or find suitable electrochemical applications. Imparting electrical conductivity to MOFs can render these otherwise insulating materials functional for applications such as electrical energy storage & release, electrocatalysis, and conductivity-based chemical sensing. The advances in synthesizing conductive MOFs often sacrifices the porosity. The highly porous and more stable MOFs are restricted by their limited conductivity in the electrochemical applications. Nonetheless, we hypothesize that MOFs can be used in electrocatalysis by serving as the support for active sites to reach competent reactivity with or without high electrical conductivity. To this end, we have investigated different methods of preparing MOF-modified electrodes such that we can measure different parameters of MOFs electrochemically and evaluate the performance of guest-modified MOFs in electrocatalysis. This thesis studies 1) the influence of electrode preparation methods to the MOF-modified electrodes and showed that we can exploit the anisotropic conductivity of MOFs with electrophoretic deposition and solvothermal growth to have preferentially oriented MOF particles on the electrode; 2) the MOF-modified electrode can be used for further operations on the MOF to produce functionalized-MOF-modified electrode; 3) even with limited conductivity, MOF-modified electrode serving as the support to active sites can exhibit promising electrocatalytic behavior.

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