Syntheses of Novel Lanthanide Metal-Organic Frameworks for Highly Efficient Visible-Light-Driven Dye Degradation

Series of lanthanide metal-organic frameworks (Ln-MOFs) have been solvothermally synthesized using an anthracene-derived dicarboxylate ligand. The synthesized Ln-MOFs (Ce, Tb, Dy) show characteristics of broad-band visible-light absorption and efficient photoinduced charge generation. For the first time, Ln-MOFs have been employed as visible-light photocatalysts for rhodamine B (RhB) degradation in the presence of oxidant of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Results show that these Ln-MOFs are highly efficient for visible-light-driven RhB degradation in aqueous solution. The degradation reactions show notable reaction rate constants. It is interesting to observe that the premixing between Ln-MOFs and H2O2 is vital to improve photocatalytic performance, indicating the advantage of porous MOF catalysts. This study not only presents rare examples of visible-light-driven MOF photocatalysts constructed from lanthanide ions, but also reveals that the H2O2-involved advanced oxidation process is feasible for enhancing photocatalytic performance of aqueous dye degradation.