Excessive heavy metals in the water constitute a health hazard to humans, yet it may be efficiently purified using adsorbents. Herein, for the first time, UiO-66-NH2 was modified by Glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) via microwave heating method to investigate its potential for adsorption of Pb(II) and Cd(II) metal ions. Synthesized MOF was characterized by TGA, XRD, BET, FE-SEM-EDX, and FTIR. The MOF has a huge surface area of 1144 m2/g, a mean pore diameter of 2.84 nm, and a total pore volume of 0.37 cm3/g. The effect of UiO-66-GMA performance was evaluated by investigating the impact of pH (1�9), contact time (0�200 min), initial metal ions concentration (20�1000 mg/L), temperature (25�55 °C), adsorbent dosage (0.5�3 g/L), and co existences of other metals was investigated on Pb(II) and Cd(II) percentage removal. Following an analysis of the adsorption isotherms, kinetics, and thermodynamics, the Temkin isothermal model showed an excellent fit with the adsorption data (R2 = 0.99). The adsorption process was a spontaneous endothermic reaction and kinetically followed the pseudo-second-order kinetics model. Microwave heating method produced highly crystalline small Zr-MOF nanoparticles with a short reaction time. It promoted the simple yet highly efficient synthesis of Zr-based MOFs, as shown by the reaction mass space-time yield. The adsorption capability of Pb to the presence of several polar functional groups, including as primary and secondary amines, ester, alkene, and hydroxyl groups. This adsorbent is a potential candidate for wastewater treatment due to its outstanding structural stability in acidic and basic solutions, high removal efficiency, and recyclability. © 2022