Luminescent metal organic framework for selective detection of mercury in aqueous media: Microwave-based synthesis and evaluation.

Mercury is one of the most hazardous environmental pollutants due to its immediate health implications on humans. With pollution risks of water bodies due to industrial and natural release of mercury, there is a need to assess the contamination of sea water to ensure its safety and sustainability to effectively prevent health deterioration due to mercury absorption through seafood consumption. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as a new class of crystalline porous materials with potential deployment for chemical detection thanks to their outstanding features including high specific surface areas, tunable pore size, and easy functionalization of the organic part upon selection of different metal ions and organic bridging ligands. In the present study, a novel MOF namely NH 2 -Cd-BDC was successfully developed and investigated toward mercury detection in a competitive aqueous medium in presence of other metal ions. NH 2 -Cd-BDC is composed of Cadmium ions (Cd2+) as the metal cluster and 2-aminoterephthalic acid (NH 2 -H 2 BDC) as the organic linker. The luminescent property of the MOF provides a cost-effective and nondestructive method for testing the detection ability of the MOF using fluoro-spectroscopy. The experiments showed that the developed MOF has a limit of detection of 0.58 μM and demonstrated the superiority of mercury detection in comparison to other metal ions including Na+, K+, Ca2+, Cr3+, Cd2+, Cu2+, Pb2+ and Fe3+. Several characterization tests of the novel developed MOF were executed including XRD, FTIR, TGA, FE-SEM and SEM to inspect its crystalline structure and thermal stability. The experimental study revealed that the MOF has a crystalline sea-shell shape, providing a large pore size for the mercury to be trapped in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]