In Situ Tracking of Wetting-Front Transient Heat Release on a Surface-Mounted Metal-Organic Framework

Transient heat generation during guest adsorption and host-guest interactions is a natural phenomenon in metal-organic framework (MOF) chemistry. However, in situ tracking of such MOF released heat is an insufficiently researched field due to the fast heat dissipation to the surroundings. Herein, a facile capillary-driven liquid-imbibition approach is developed for in situ tracking of transient heat release at the wetting front of surface-mounted MOFs (SURMOFs) on cellulosic fiber substrates. Spatiotemporal temperature distributions are obtained with infrared thermal imaging for a range of MOF-based substrates and imbibed liquids. Temperature rises at the wetting front of water and binary mixtures with organic solvents are found to be over 10 K with an ultrafast and distinguishable thermal signal response (<1 s) with a detectable concentration limit ≤1 wt%. As an advancement to the state-of-the-art in trace-solvent detection technologies, this study shows great prospects for the integration of SURMOFs in future sensor devices. Inspired by this prototypal study, SURMOF-based transient heat signal transduction is likely to be extended to an ever-expanding library of SURMOFs and other classes of surface-grafted porous materials, translating into a wide range of convenient, portable, and ubiquitous sensor devices.