Elimination of Trace Tetracycline with Alkyl Modified MIL‐101 in Water

The overuse of antibiotics poses a serious threat to human health and ecosystems. Therefore, the development of high-performance antibiotic removal materials has attracted increasing attention. However, the adsorption and removal of trace amounts of antibiotics in aqueous systems still face significant challenges. Taking tetracycline (TC) as a representative antibiotic and based on its structural characteristics, a series of TC adsorbents are prepared by grafting alkyl groups to the framework of MIL-101(Cr). The adsorptive capacity of the modified materials for tetracycline markedly surpasses that of MIL-101(Cr), with MIL-101-dod achieving the best adsorption performance. MIL-101-dod demonstrated an outstanding ability to adsorb tetracycline at low concentrations, where a 5.0 mg sample of MIL-101-dod can reduce the concentration of a 90 mL 5 ppm tetracycline solution to below 1 ppb, significantly superior to other sorbents. XPS and IR tests indicate that MIL-101-dod has multiple weak interactions with tetracycline molecules, including C─H…O and C─H…π. This work provides theoretical and experimental support for the development of adsorbents for low-concentration antibiotics.