One-pot synthesis of Cu-based metal-organic frameworks for environmental applications

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are the coordination polymers of particular interest for targeted drug delivery in a controlled manner. MOFs have several interesting properties in terms of high porosity, large surface area, biodegradable and biocompatible nature for efficient encapsulation of active molecules. We have addressed here the challenge to load the active molecules of benzimidazole group during the synthesis of Cu-MOF. This one-pot approach is advantageous over existing approaches that require multistep post-functionalization for encapsulation of drug-molecules. The prepared MOFs are characterized using FT-IR, UV-Vis spectroscopy, XRD, and SEM analysis. The Cu-MOF are found incipient stable for delivery of active molecules along with high encapsulation efficiency (∼96%).