Metal Organic Frameworks for water harvesting from air: an operando structural and electronic characterization

Life depends on water, and it is estimated that by 2050 nearly half of the world population will live in water stressed regions. Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) offer high potential for the environmentally friendly passive capture of clean water from humid air. However, a detailed mechanistic, structural, and electronic understanding of the dynamic adsorption-desorption process is lacking. Here, we propose a combined in situ hard-X-ray XAS/XRD study targeting metal sites to investigate the electronic and crystal structure modifications during water adsorption and desorption in prototypical water harvesting MOF systems with and without open metal centres. We expect our spectroscopic results to unveil the stages of water capture by selected MOFs with unprecedented structural detail, in combination with parallel soft-XAS studies, thereby paving the way for the rational design of improved MOF water harvesting systems.