Tailoring the Surface Properties of Co-based Metal-Organic Frameworks for Highly Efficient and Selective Enrichment...

The high tunability of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) provides attractive flexibility to tailor their surface properties for practical demands. Here we report the regulation of the surface properties (hydrophilicity and charge characteristics) of Co-based MOFs by exploiting different organic building units and tailor them as efficient adsorbents for specific protein enrichment. Compared with the pristine Co-based MOF (Co-MOF) and the aminated MOF (Co-MOF-NH₂), the MOF decorated with abundant hydroxyl groups (Co-MOF-OH) exhibits superior adsorption selectivity and enriched efficiency toward immunoglobulin G (IgG) in the physiological state (pH 7.4) by taking advantage of the favorable hydrogen-bonding interactions and electrostatic force between IgG and Co-MOF-OH. The enrichment factor for IgG is high, up to 97.7 for enriching IgG from the IgG/human serum albumin mixture with a mass ratio of 1:50, and circular dichroism indicates that the enrichment process poses no influence on the protein structure. Moreover, Co-MOF-OH proves its practicability in complex biological samples by the selective extraction of IgG from complex human serum samples.