Facile in-situ strategy for incorporating amphoteric dopamine into metal–organic framework with optimized degradation capacity of nerve agents simulant

Zr based metal–organic frameworks incorporated with dopamine, which contains amphoteric nucleophilic groups, are applied to the detoxication of nerve agent simulant DMNP with extraordinary performance under pure water media. • In-situ incorporating amphoteric nucleophilic dopamine for optimizing MOF catalysts. • The dopamine doped MOFs realizing instantaneous hydrolysis of nerve-agent simulants. • Clarify mechanism and pave high performance MOF design way for nerve agent hydrolysis. Zr based metal−organic frameworks (Zr-MOFs) as the state-of-the-art catalytic materials have been revealed great potential for instantaneous degradation of the deadly toxic organophosphorus nerve agent. On account of the prerequisite of MOFs practically working in hydrolysis of organophosphorus toxicant is need volatile liquid base, the utility of MOFs on nerve agent degradation is greatly limited. Thus, developing catalytic materials with well performance in pure water is aa great challenge for catalytic hydrolysis of nerve agent under practical field. Herein, we report an in-situ strategy to synthesize MOF composites incorporated with dopamine (DA), a molecule contains amphoteric amino and catechol groups. The integration of DA onto internal structure of Zr-MOFs leads to the optimal performance and robustness for rapid nerve agent simulant degradation. The hydrolysis catalyzed by UiO-66-NH 2 @DA can reach to a half-life of 7 min, a considerable rapid rate compared to the more than 20 min of monotonic basic functional agents in a non-alkaline environment, besides, the optimized functional MOF, MOF-808@DA, outperformed most previously reported MOF-based catalysts with a half-life of 0.64 min and the time of 100% detoxification within 5 min.