Amino-Functionalizing Ce-Based MOF UiO-66 for Enhanced CO2 Adsorption and Selectivity.

Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks (MOF) hold great promise for CO2 adsorption due to their high surface areas, tunable pore sizes, and the ability to modify their chemical properties to enhance CO2 affinity. MOFs tagged with functional groups either at linker or metal sites have shown improved CO2 uptake capacity and selectivity. This study focuses on investigating the potential of selective CO2 adsorption using amino functionalization of linker forming Ce-UiO-66. The physicochemical properties and characteristics of MOFs to determine the degree of amino functionalization and structural stability were examined using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Fourier transformer infra-red (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and N2 porosimetry and specific surface area (BET). This work unveils a novel array of results on CO2, N2 and water vapour adsorption on Ce-UiO-66-NH2. The amino-functionalized Ce-UiO-66-NH2 shows 63 % higher CO2 uptake and 84 % higher CO2/N2 selectivity at 273 K and 1 bar over Ce-UiO-66. Ce-UiO-66-NH2 also shows excellent structural stability after gas and vapour sorption making Ce-UiO-66-NH2 potential adsorbent for CO2 capture.