Selective Adsorption of Rare Earth Elements by Zn-BDC MOF/Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites Synthesized via In Situ Interlayer-Confined Strategy

Separation of rare earth elements has always been an urgent problem in the industry. Although a variety of adsorption materials have been developed for the adsorption and separation of rare earth elements, it is difficult to achieve high adsorption capacity and high separation selectivity from most of them at the same time. In this work, to combine the advantages of the good adsorption capacity of graphene oxide (GO) and high separation selectivity of metal organic frameworks (MOFs), two-dimensional MOFs and GO nanocomposite materials (2D Zn-BDC MOF/GO) were synthesized by a solvothermal interlayer-confined strategy. The composite material has a maximum adsorption capacity of 344.48 mg/g for rare earth ions, with the selectivity of Sc/Tm ≈ 529.57, Sc/Er ≈ 461.91, Sc/Y ≈ 445.70, and Tm/Eu ≈ 4.55. This work brings us a new route to synthesize 2D MOF/GO nanocomposite materials and combine their advantages for the separation of rare earth elements in chemical engineering research.