A thermostable pillared layered metal-borate- organic network featuring neighboring boron sites for oxidative dehydrogenation of propane

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with exposed boron sites are potentially promising materials to catalyze oxidative dehydrogenation of propane (ODHP). The reticular chemistry enables a detailed investigation of the role of boron sites with different chemical environments in catalyzing the ODHP reaction and further designing MOFs with high efficiency. However, the poor oxidation resistance of MOFs limits their use in ODHP applications. In this study, we develop a metal-borate-organic network (denoted as MBON-2) with a pillared layered structure. MBON-2 features a nanosheet-assembled 3D flower-like hierarchical structure and remarkable thermal stability. By taking advantage of the structural featural of graphene-like ZnBO layers, the edges of the MBON-2 nanosheet expose numerous boron sites that exhibit excellent catalytic performance in ODHP. The characterization and density functional theory results suggest that neighboring boron sites, when at an optimal distance, offer a potential reaction pathway that synergistically abstracts H atoms of propane sequentially.