A Non‐Equilibrium Flame Aerosol Process to Create High‐Entropy MOFs

High-entropy alloys and ceramics have demonstrated promising applications in the past decade. Ultrafast heating and cooling can kinetically trap immiscible elements into solid solutions, expanding the compositional space and optimizing the properties of high-entropy materials. However, the extreme temperatures required by these non-equilibrium methods are incompatible with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). This work presents a flame aerosol strategy for synthesizing compositionally complex, entropically stabilized MOFs, enabling new combinations of properties previously inaccessible in this class of materials. Using the HKUST structure as a prototype, this methodology is extended to a wide array of both crystalline and amorphous MOFs, and then to a 10-element MOF that incorporates transition metals, rare-earth metals, alkaline-earth metals, p-block metals, and noble metals. This strategy can be further applied to inorganic coordination polymers. This study reveals that kinetics and entropy collectively drive structural short-range periodicity and configurational disorder in the framework, which in turn influence crystallinity, pore architecture, defect density, homogeneity, and electrochemical properties. This work expands the compositional design space for MOFs and offers new opportunities for their fundamental study and practical application.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Materials
Published
2026-07-23
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.74201
Primary Topic
Metal-Organic Frameworks: Synthesis and Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

A Non‐Equilibrium Flame Aerosol Process to Create High‐Entropy MOFs

Zhengxi Xuan, Jeffrey J. Urban, Mark T. Swihart, Kaihang Shi et al.
Advanced Materials
Metal-Organic Frameworks: Synthesis and Applications
article

A Non‐Equilibrium Flame Aerosol Process to Create High‐Entropy MOFs

Zhengxi Xuan, Jeffrey J. Urban, Mark T. Swihart, Kaihang Shi, Yaoli Zhao, Chaochao Dun, K Wang, S T Liu, Shaon Das, Christina T. Scalzo, Gang Wu, Chao Zheng, Keping Chen, Sai Varun Karepakula, Dominik Wierzbicki, Mohd Ashhar Khan, Jiashun Liang, Sanjit Ghose, Baishakhi Mazumder, Wei Chen, Jialu Li, Jinghua Guo, Qike Jiang
article en

Abstract

High-entropy alloys and ceramics have demonstrated promising applications in the past decade. Ultrafast heating and cooling can kinetically trap immiscible elements into solid solutions, expanding the compositional space and optimizing the properties of high-entropy materials. However, the extreme temperatures required by these non-equilibrium methods are incompatible with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). This work presents a flame aerosol strategy for synthesizing compositionally complex, entropically stabilized MOFs, enabling new combinations of properties previously inaccessible in this class of materials. Using the HKUST structure as a prototype, this methodology is extended to a wide array of both crystalline and amorphous MOFs, and then to a 10-element MOF that incorporates transition metals, rare-earth metals, alkaline-earth metals, p-block metals, and noble metals. This strategy can be further applied to inorganic coordination polymers. This study reveals that kinetics and entropy collectively drive structural short-range periodicity and configurational disorder in the framework, which in turn influence crystallinity, pore architecture, defect density, homogeneity, and electrochemical properties. This work expands the compositional design space for MOFs and offers new opportunities for their fundamental study and practical application.

Advanced Materials
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US), Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), Westlake University (CN), Alfred University (US), University at Buffalo, State University of New York (US), AGH University of Krakow (PL)
National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Basic Energy Sciences
Openalex Percentile: Top 20%
Metal-Organic Frameworks: Synthesis and Applications
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