Facile synthesis of self-assembled three-dimensional flower-like Cu-MOF and its pyrolytic derivative Cu-N-C450 for diverse applications

Despite the rapid development of metal-organic framework materials (MOFs), the development of multifunctional MOFs and their application in catalytic and antibacterial fields is still of great significance. In this work, a three-dimensional flower-like Cu-MOF was successfully synthesized by a simple solvothermal method and its pyrolytic derivative Cu-N-C450 was obtained through pyrolysis of the Cu-MOF. For the first time, the Cu-MOF was preliminarily verified to have laccase-like activity and exhibited excellent antibacterial ability to Escherichia coli (E. coli) at a very low concentration of 10 µg/mL without the addition of other substrate. Interestingly, we found the re-assembly of the micro-sized Cu-MOF to generate larger sized flower-like structures which was not common in the self-assembled phenomenon. We found the collision and centrifugation induced external force interaction might be the main factor. In addition, the Cu-MOF was also be used as adsorbent to remove environmental pollutants, such as methylene blue, and the Cu-N-C450 can rapidly catalyze the degradation of methylene blue with a high efficiency to 96.7%. This work offers a multifunctional MOFs material and promotes the exploration of extending application of the MOFs.