Lin Yue, Min Ke, Ma Wende, Yang Xuezhi, Lu Dawei, Lin Zhenyu, Liu Qian, Jiang Guibin
State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100085 China
School of Environment, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS Hangzhou 310024 China.
Chem Sci. 2024 Feb 6;15(10):3698-3706. doi: 10.1039/d4sc00021h. eCollection 2024 Mar 6.
The widespread application of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is seriously hindered by their structural instability and it is still very challenging to probe the stability of MOFs during application by current techniques. Here, we report a novel structure-responsive mass spectrometry (SRMS) imaging technique to probe the stability of MOFs. We discovered that intact CuBTC (as a model of MOFs) could generate the characteristic peaks of organic ligands and carbon cluster anions in laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry, but these peaks were significantly changed when the structure of CuBTC was dissociated, thus enabling a label-free probing of the stability. Furthermore, SRMS can be performed in imaging mode to visualize the degradation kinetics and reveal the spatial heterogeneity of the stability of CuBTC. This technique was successfully applied in different application scenarios (in water, moist air, and CO) and also validated with different MOFs. It thus provides a versatile new tool for better design and application of environment-sensitive materials.
金属有机框架材料（MOFs）的广泛应用受到其结构不稳定性的严重阻碍，并且利用当前技术在应用过程中探测MOFs的稳定性仍然极具挑战性。在此，我们报道了一种用于探测MOFs稳定性的新型结构响应质谱（SRMS）成像技术。我们发现完整的CuBTC（作为MOFs的一个模型）在激光解吸/电离质谱中能够产生有机配体和碳簇阴离子的特征峰，但当CuBTC的结构解离时，这些峰发生了显著变化，从而实现了对稳定性的无标记探测。此外，SRMS可以在成像模式下进行，以可视化降解动力学并揭示CuBTC稳定性的空间异质性。该技术已成功应用于不同的应用场景（在水、潮湿空气和CO中），并在不同的MOFs上得到验证。因此，它为更好地设计和应用环境敏感材料提供了一种通用的新工具。
