Studying the significance of the parameters involved in the synthesis of Y-UiO-66 to improve product yield

The significance of the parameters involved in the synthesis of rare-earth metal–organic frameworks (RE-MOFs) has not been studied in depth. Design of experiments (DoE) is used herein to determine the impact of seven synthetic parameters on the yield and surface area of Y-UiO-66 (UiO = University of Oslo). The seven synthetic parameters are evaluated through 16 experiments, leading to a new synthetic procedure for Y-UiO-66 that increases the yield from 30 % to 84 % while maintaining high crystallinity and surface area. These results show that a simple screening design, using DoE, is useful for the improvement of MOF synthesis. The new procedure is successfully adapted to scale-up the reaction twenty times, as well as to improve the yield of Ho- and Yb-UiO-66, demonstrating that it can be extended to lanthanoid analogues of UiO-66. The results obtained from the design were used to improve the yield of Tb-CU-27 (CU = Concordia University) with only one experiment, suggesting that the synthetic parameters identified as being significant for Y-UiO-66 have a similar effect on other RE cluster-based MOFs.