Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) constitute a family of porous, crystalline hybrid materials built from metal ions interconnected by polydentate organic ligands. Owing to their well-defined pore architectures, high internal surface areas, and tunable chemical functionalities, MOFs have attracted considerable scientific attention for diverse applications, including gas storage and separation, sensing, catalysis, biomedicine, and so on1. Despite this strong potential, several limitations still significantly restrict the large-scale transfer of MOFs toward industrial implementation. One of the major challenges lies in the shaping of such materials2. Indeed, conventional MOF syntheses typically yield brittle powders, whose inherent fragility, poor processability, and limited handling properties severely hinder their practical deployment. To address these issues, MOFs have been processed into pellets, granules, beads, fibers, or membranes; however, such shaping procedures often result in a partial or complete loss of accessible porosity2.
A widely explored strategy to overcome these drawbacks involves integrating MOFs with supporting matrices, particularly polymers or carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and graphene oxide3,4,5,6. This approach has led to the development of multifunctional composites that combine the intrinsic advantages of MOFs (porosity, crystallinity) with the mechanical robustness and processability of the host materials. In addition, hybridization can introduce new functionalities, including enhanced chemical stability, improved electrical conductivity, or hierarchical porosity3,4,5,6. As a result, MOF-based composites have been extensively investigated for gas adsorption and separation, water purification, catalysis, and bioapplications3,4,5,6,7,8. Nevertheless, a recurring limitation of such composites is the pronounced aggregation of MOF particles, which is generally attributed to poor interfacial compatibility between the MOFs and the supporting matrix. This issue is particularly prevalent in composites prepared by physically blending pre-synthesized MOF particles with polymers or graphene oxide and becomes increasingly severe at high MOF loadings, which are typically required to optimize performance3,4,5,6. To mitigate these challenges, numerous alternative strategies have been proposed to improve the physico-chemical affinity between MOFs and polymeric or carbon-based matrices while preserving MOF porosity. These include surface functionalization of MOF particles, covalent grafting of polymers onto MOF surfaces, in situ growth of MOFs within polymer matrices, polymer-directed MOF crystallization, or the use of polymeric ligands to construct polyMOFs3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Despite these advances, many MOF-polymer composites still suffer from reduced surface areas due to pore blockage by polymer chains and from inhomogeneous MOF dispersion. Moreover, their preparation often relies on multi-step, time-intensive synthetic routes, and the use of petrochemical-derived synthetic polymers raises concerns related to toxicity, sustainability, and environmental impact3,4,5,6.
The purpose of this article is to share the details of the preparation of a hydrogel composite based on a Zr4⁺ dicarboxylate UiO-66–type MOF (UiO = University of Oslo)10and gelatin. This system is selected as a representative example to illustrate a general synthetic strategy that can be extended to a broader family of polycarboxylate porous MOFs, including functionalized UiO-66 derivatives and MOF-801(Zr). Gelatin is a widely employed protein-based biopolymer in industrial applications such as drug and cosmetic microencapsulation, owing to its low cost, biodegradability, non-toxicity, and renewable origin11. In the past few years, MOF-gelatin hydrogels have been primarily investigated for bio-related applications such as tissue engineering, wound healing, drug delivery, and bioimaging12,13,14,15,16,17. These composites were generally prepared by impregnating preformed MOF particles into functionalized gelatin scaffolds or physical gelatin gels. While such materials exhibit promising biological performance, they typically contain very low MOF contents (below 10 wt%), resulting in limited porosity and consequently, restricting the exploitation of MOF-related physicochemical properties12,13,14,15,16,17. The present article describes a completely different strategy that exploits the thermoreversible properties of gelatin and its ability to undergo liquid-liquid phase separation18,19 associated with the room temperature (RT) in-situ formation of MOFs. In the protocol described in this article, critical steps in preparing the UiO-66/gelatin composites will be covered, including the preparation of gelatin solution, the gelatin coacervation process, the RT crystallization of UiO-66 within gelatin, and the shaping of the resulting composites. Such composites have been recently reported by some of us to develop adsorbents for cultural heritage preservation, but their protocol of synthesis was not described in detail20. We hope that the concepts and methodology presented in this article will motivate the research community to explore and develop a wider class of MOF-biopolymer composites. These materials simultaneously exhibit high MOF loadings (exceeding 80 wt%), large accessible porosity, homogeneous dispersion of MOF particles within the gelatin matrix, and tunable hydrophilic-hydrophobic characteristics20. A key advantage of employing biomacromolecules such as gelatin lies in their intrinsic chemical complexity, multifunctionality, and polyelectrolyte nature, which have no direct synthetic equivalents. This unique combination enables the effective integration of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic MOFs within a water-soluble biopolymer matrix.