| The recently developed family, the metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), is coordinative organometallic compounds. Their structures and porosities can be tuned via changing the ligands' architecture and functional groups, leading to diversified applications in the fields of gas storage and adsorption/separation, drug storage/delivery, and shape-selective/size-selective catalysis. This study completed three key objectives to 1) produce MOFs with different ligands and central metal elements; 2) measure the fine structures of MOFs using advanced analytical methods; and apply the MOFs to inactivate Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterias and evaluate the cytotoxicity of MOFs towards to the human cells. A cost-effective method, solvothermal chemistry is used to synthesis the colloidal MOF motif. Gram-negative (Serratia marcescens, S. marcescens, commercially available strains, ATCC 13880) and Gram-positive bacteria (Micrococcus luteus, M. luteus, commercially available strains, ATCC 49732) were used to evaluate the bactericidal activities of MOFs. Results Co, Zn and Ce based MOFs are highly effective at inactivating MOFs, which showed similar efficacy as the published data by Dr. W. Zhuang. The MOFs were also used as molecular probes to measure their cytotoxicity towards human cells, retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Zn-PTTA (also defined as MOF46) MOFs displayed limited cytotoxicity toward RPE cell lines, however, they showed high potency to inactivate bacteria. This study showed that the MOFs as disinfectants to kill microbes through singlet oxygen species (SOS) and cytotoxicity mechanism, while RPE by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and SOS mechanisms. |
