Exploring the photoinduced carbon dioxide release mechanism over photoswitchable metal-organic frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly promising candidates for CO2 capture, owing to their superior chemical and structural tunability over conventional porous materials. MOFs may also incorporate moieties that undergo conformational changes upon UV irradiation, a property which has been exploited to prepare materials that release CO2 in a controlled manner after being irradiated with UV light, although little mechanistic is available over how the UV-triggered CO2 release process may occur. Here, we intend to perform a combined XAS/XRD characterization of the CO2 uptake and UV-triggered release over PCN-250(Fe), a robust photoswitchable MOF with good CO2 capacity, and its mixed-metal analogues containing also Co(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II) sites. The proposed experiment will provide direct insight on the mechanism of UV-induced release of CO2, which is crucial for the development of improved photoswitchable MOF materials with high real-world application potential in the field of carbon