Hierarchical porous metal-organic frameworks/polymer microparticles for enhanced catalytic degradation of organic contaminants

This work reports on a simple microfluidic strategy to controllably fabricate uniform polymeric microparticles containing hierarchical porous structures integrated with highly accessible catalytic metal organic frameworks for efficient degradation of organic contaminants. Monodisperse (W1/O)/W2 emulsion droplets generated from microfluidics are used as templates for the microparticle synthesis. The emulsion droplets contain tiny water microdroplets from homogenization and water nanodroplets from diffusion-induced swollen micelles as the dual pore-forming templates, and Fe-based metal-organic framework nanorods as the nanocatalysts. The obtained microparticles possess interconnected hierarchical porous structures decorated with highly accessible Fe-based metal-organic framework nanorods for enhanced degradation of organic contaminants via a heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction. Such a degradation performance is highlighted by using these microparticles for efficient degradation of rhodamine B in hydrogen peroxide solution. This work provides a simple and general strategy to flexibly combine hierarchical porous structures and catalytic metal-organic frameworks to engineer advanced microparticles for water decontamination.