Green reconstruction of MIL-100 (Fe) in water for high crystallinity and enhanced guest encapsulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a green water-based method to synthesize highly crystalline MIL-100 (Fe) MOF, enabling efficient drug encapsulation and providing insights into guest-host interactions, with potential for biomedical and environmental applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel mechanochemical water immersion technique for green synthesis of MIL-100 (Fe) and demonstrates its application in drug encapsulation and interaction analysis.

Findings

Successful green synthesis of highly crystalline MIL-100 (Fe)

Effective encapsulation of drugs like 5-fluorouracil, caffeine, and aspirin

Inelastic neutron scattering reveals guest-host interaction mechanisms

Abstract

MIL-100 (Fe) is a highly porous metal-organic framework (MOF), considered as a promising carrier for drug delivery, and for gas separation and capture applications. However, this functional material suffers from elaborated and toxic synthesis that may hinder its biomedical use and large-scale production to afford commercial applications. Herein, we report a green mechanochemical water immersion approach to yield highly crystalline MIL100 (Fe) material. Subsequently, we have harnessed this strategy for facile fabrication of drug@MOF composite systems, comprising (guests) 5-fluorouracil, caffeine, or aspirin encapsulated in the pores of (host) MIL-100 (Fe). Inelastic neutron scattering was uniquely used to probe the guest host interactions arising from pore confinement of the drug molecules, giving additional insights into the reconstruction mechanism. Our results pave the way to the green production of MIL type materials and bespoke guest-encapsulated composites by minimizing the use of toxic chemicals, whilst enhancing energy efficiency and material's life cycle central to biotechnological applications.