A Gas-Steamed Route to Mesoporous Open Metal–Organic Framework Cages Enhancing Flame Retardancy and Smoke Suppression of Polyurea

Up to now, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with open nanostructures have shown outstanding capabilities in trapping smoke particles compared to the original MOFs. However, only a few MOF-based strategies have been reported to synthesize hierarchical porous cages thus far, which are mainly restricted to environmentally unfriendly wet-chemical liquid methods. Herein, as a proof-of-concept, a gas-steamed metal–organic framework approach was designed to fabricate a series of cheeselike open cages with hierarchical porosity. Briefly, zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) and phytic acid were employed as precursor and etchant, respectively. Abandoning the conventional wet-chemical method, the coordination bond of ZIF-67 was cleaved by acidic steam, forming an open framework with a high specific surface area and a hierarchical porous structure. The universality of this method was also confirmed by the selection of different etchants. Impressively, they also show outstanding fume-toxic adsorption capability and labyrinth effects based on abundant and complex porous channels. At only 5 wt % loading, Co3O4@open ZIF-67 cage-2 (Co3O4@OZC-2) imparted polyurea (PUA) composites with a 21.2% limiting oxygen index, and the peak of heat release rate, total heat release, and total smoke production were reduced by around 37.5, 25.5, and 40.4%, respectively, compared to neat PUA. This work will shed light on the advanced structural design of polymer composites with high fire safety, especially smoke suppression performance, so as to obtain more feasible applications.