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Updated: Apr 23, 2026
Synthesis of Single-Crystalline Core-Shell Metal-Organic Frameworks
Published on: February 10, 2023
Hollow metal-organic framework nanospheres via emulsion-based interfacial synthesis and their application in
Yufen Yang1, Fengwei Wang, Qihao Yang
1CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, §Department of Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and ∥Department of Chemical Physics, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) represent an emerging class of crystalline materials with well-defined pore structures and hold great potentials in a wide range of important applications. The functionality of MOFs can be further extended by integration with other functional materials, e.g., encapsulating metal nanoparticles, to form hybrid materials with novel properties. In spite of various synthetic approaches that have been developed recently, a facile method to prepare hierarchical hollow MOF nanostructures still remains a challenge. Here we describe a facile emulsion-based interfacial reaction method for the large-scale synthesis of hollow zeolitic imidazolate framework 8 (ZIF-8) nanospheres with controllable shell thickness. We further demonstrate that functional metal nanoparticles such as Pd nanocubes can be encapsulated during the emulsification process and used for heterogeneous catalysis. The inherently porous structure of ZIF-8 shells enables encapsulated catalysts to show size-selective hydrogenation reactions.
