Metal Organic Framework Functionalized Textiles as Protective Clothing for the Detection and Detoxification of Chemical Warfare Agents—A Review

Abstract

Chemical warfare agents (CWAs) have been listed as lethal weapons of mass destruction due to their extreme toxicity and devastating effects. Detection and detoxification are essential to protect ourselves from such acutely perilous agents and have therefore generated a great deal of research interest. In this context, studies show that adsorbents such as activated carbon, metal oxides, and metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are active materials for the effective degradation of CWAs. Among them, MOFs are preferred because of their large surface area, tunable porosity, and catalytic, functional, and chemical stability properties. With this background, we comprehensively review the historical purview of the utility of CWAs, the potency of various CWAs, and their toxic profiles. Further, we discuss the research strategies reported to synthesize MOFs of desirable characteristics by tuning the synthesis parameters such as solvents, temperature, guest molecules, and organic ligands. Specifically, we highlight the multifarious studies of the impregnation of MOFs onto fibers/textiles as selfprotecting fabrics using different techniques. Finally, we enumerate the challenges in developing MOFs-incorporated textiles and their functionalization toward the detection and detoxification of CWAs. As a future perspective, further requirements and possibilities of using MOF-modified textiles as wearable electronic devices for the detection and detoxification of CWAs have also been addressed.

A Self-Degradable Hydrogel Sensor for a Nerve Agent Tabun Surrogate Through a Self-Propagating Cascade

“…Because of the risks associated with working with nerve agents, experiments are generally performed using surrogate molecules that are safer to handle than real CWAs but with similar chemical behavior and structure. [17][18][19][20] We choose diethyl cyanophosphonate (DCNP) as the tabun mimic, and as described below, two reactions initiated by cyanide to release a thiol were devised (Scheme 2). Admittedly, for the real agent the experimental conditions may need to be adjusted to accommodate small differences in reactivity.…”

Heat-regulating polylactic acid/silica aerogel composite fabric: Preparation and characterization

“…As global demand for textiles grows, the potential environmental effects resulting from their production, use, and disposal increase accordingly [1][2][3]. Textile fibers are primarily made from petrochemical materials, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [4], nylon [5], and polypropylene [6].…”

Metal Oxide Nanosystems As Chemoresistive Gas Sensors for Chemical Warfare Agents: A Focused Review

“…[10,11] CWAs were then tragically employed during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, and, more recently, in the Iran-Iraq war, [12,13] in the Gulf Wars, [14] and in Syria. [9,[15][16][17][18] In 2012, it was estimated that North Korea may possess 2500-5000 tons of CWAs. [6] Despite being definitively banned by international treatises, [9,13,16,[18][19][20] CWAs, some of the most dangerous gases on the planet due to their colorless, odorless, and toxic characteristics, [21,22] are still deadly agents in…”

“…[8,13,[23][24][25][26][27] Examples in this regard include nerve agents release in Japan (Matsumoto, 1994 andTokyo, 1995), [2][3][4][36][37][38][39][40] Al Qaeda threats, [41] the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur Airport (Malaysia) in 2017, [42,43] and the poisoning of the Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury (UK) in 2018. [44] Highly lethal CWAs, that can be classified into four main categories (see Table 1; nerve, blood, vesicant, and choking agents [2,4,5,10,17,28,[45][46][47][48] ) can burn and blister skin/eyes, enter into the body in blood and attack the nervous system. [9,12,15,16,36,38,[49][50][51][52][53] As a consequence, increasing worldwide efforts have been aimed at their disposal, destruction [10,11,19,…”

“…[9,12,15,16,36,38,[49][50][51][52][53] As a consequence, increasing worldwide efforts have been aimed at their disposal, destruction [10,11,19,54,55] and -very importantly -sensitive and prompt recognition, an imperative issue for the public health system. [12,15,17,23,45,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] In the latter context, the scientific community has devoted in the last decades a growing interest to the development of sensing platforms for CWAs detection, especially as far as chemoresistive gas sensors are concerned (Figure 1).…”