Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)-based yolk-shell nanostructures have drawn enormous attention recently due to their multifunctionality. However, the regulations of the size and morphology of yolk-shell nanostructures are still limited by the unclear formation mechanism. Herein, we first demonstrated a solvent-dependent adsorption-driven mechanism for synthesizing yolk-shelled MOFs-based nanostructures coated with mesoporous SiO2 shells (ZIF-8@mSiO2 ) with tunable size and morphology. The selective and competitive adsorption of methanol (CH3 OH) and water (H2 O) on ZIF-8 core were found to have decisive effects on inducing the morphology evolution of yolk-shell nanostructures. The obtained yolk-shelled ZIF-8@mSiO2 nanostructures show great promise in generating acoustic cavitation effect for sonodynamic cancer therapy in vitro. We believe that this work will not only help us to design novel MOFs-based yolk-shell nanostructures, but also promote the widespread application of MOFs materials.
Keywords: acoustic cavitation; adsorption-driven mechanism; metal-organic frameworks; sonodynamic therapy; yolk-shell nanostructure.
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