Mehra Sanjay, Polisetti Veerababu, Damarla Krishnaiah, Ray Paramita, Kumar Arvind
CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, G. B. Marg, Bhavnagar, Gujarat 364002, India.
Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad 201002, India.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Sep 1;13(34):41249-41261. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c10184. Epub 2021 Aug 21.
Microemulsions (MEs) comprising choline dioctylsulfosuccinate [Cho][AOT], a biobased ionic liquid (IL) surfactant as an emulsifier, ()-(+)-limonene (RL) as a nonpolar phase, and ethylene glycol (EG)/ethanolammonium formate (EOAF) as an organic solvent/low-viscosity IL polar component were constructed. Spontaneous aggregation of [Cho][AOT] was observed with a negative Δ form using isothermal titration calorimetry. The aggregates of [Cho][AOT] in RL showed a critical micellar concentration (cmc) of ∼5.49 mM, EG (cmc ∼3.99 mM), and EOAF (cmc ∼1.56 mM), and these are further characterized by various techniques. These novel IL-based MEs have been used as nanoreactors for the sustainable synthesis of uniform nanosized metal-organic frameworks (N-MOFs), such as MIL-53(Al), HKUST-1, UIO-66-NH, and ZIF-8, with a precise control over size and morphology at room temperature. Characterization of N-MOFs has been performed using scanning electron microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The synthesized N-MOFs have been used to prepare stable and uniform thin film nanocomposite nanofiltration membranes, suitable for desalination of brackish water with excellent flux (31.8 LMH/bar) and rejection (99.0%) of divalent salts.
