Abstract

A robust and highly water stable series of UiO-66-drived MOFs including UiO-66-NH2, glycidyl methacrylate functionalized UiO-66-NH2 (UiO-66-GMA) and ethylenediamine functionalized UiO-66-NH2 (UiO-66-EDA) were synthesized solvothermally and studied their adsorption performances toward two anti-cancer drugs, methotrexate (MTX) and curcumin (CUR) in the case of overdose. It was found that functionalizing the surface of UiO-66-NH2 nanoparticles with different functional groups remarkably changes the adsorption capacity and the ideal adsorption selectivity of MTX over CUR. Particularly, the UiO-66-EDA exhibited the highest adsorption capacities for both drugs, 540.78 and 423.85 mg/g for MTX and CUR, respectively, because of the strong interaction between drug molecules and adsorbent via hydrogen bonding due to the existence of different polar functional groups. The kinetics of drugs adsorption was investigated by three well-known kinetic models, which the output indicates that the adsorption of both drugs onto the synthesized MOFs follow the pseudo-second-order model. Moreover, it was found that the equilibrium adsorption results were well fitted with the Langmuir isotherm models, revealing that the adsorption of both drugs onto the synthesized MOFs is a monolayer adsorption process. Further investigation illustrated that the synthesized MOFs could be easily activated and reused after four successive adsorption-desorption cycles. The output of the present work is of main important for biomedical and environmental applications of MOFs as an outstanding adsorbent for adsorption removal of hazardous drugs from contaminated aqueous solutions.