Screening the Specific Surface Area for Metal-Organic Frameworks by Cataluminescence

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are famous for their large surface area, which is responsible for the dispersed active sites and decent behaviors in gas adsorption, storage, and catalytic reactions. However, it remains a great challenge to acquire a cost-effective and accurate evaluation on the surface area for the MOFs. In this work, we have proposed cataluminescence (CTL) to evaluate the specific surface area for the MOFs, based on the adsorption–desorption and the catalytic reaction of ethanol. Aluminum-based MOFs with large-pore (lp), narrow-pore (np), and medium-pore (mp-130, mp-140, and mp-150 synthesized under 130, 140, and 150 °C) have been prepared. Distinguished CTL signals were acquired from ethanol in the presence of these MOFs: lp > mp-150 > mp-130 > mp-140 > np. Note that the CTL intensities were positively correlated with the specific surface areas of these MOFs acquired by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method. The distinct specific surface area of MOFs determined the capacity to accommodate and activate ethanol, leading to the varied CTL intensity signals. Therefore, the proposed CTL could be utilized for the rapid and accurate evaluation of the specific surface area for MOFs. It is believed that this CTL strategy showed great possibilities in the structural evaluation for various porous materials.