Facile synthesis of foam MIL-101(Cr) with the enhanced catalytic capability

MIL-101(Cr) is one of the most famous chromium-benzenedicarboxylate metal-organic framework (MOF), which is well investigated and used in numerous applications. Here, a novel structural foam MIL-101(Cr) (F -MIL) has been facilely synthesized with the presence of SiO2. The obtained F -MIL possessed a similar structure to nickel foam, which involved a micro-macro-meso-porous structure. Unlike conventional powdery MIL-101(Cr), F -MIL exhibited lumpy morphology and all the MIL-101(Cr) crystals were highly fused into a whole, which presented outstanding mass transfer ability and porosity accessibility. Thus, F -MIL showed much higher catalytic activity in cyanosilylation of aldehyde reaction, Indene oxidation reaction and 1-dodecene oxidation reaction.