Auxiliary ligand influence on interpenetration and C2H2/CO2 separation in NDI based isoreticular MOFs

Abstract

Selective separation of C2H2 from CO2 mixtures promises a critical industrial process to produce high-purity C2H2 but challenging due to their similar physical properties and molecular sizes/shapes. Naphthalenediimide (NDI) ligand-based metal − organic frameworks (MOFs) exhibit potential in selective adsorption of C2H2 due to NDI’s high affinity to C2H2 molecules. Here, three iso-reticular NDI based MOFs (denoted as FJU-109, 110 and 111) are obtained by tuning interpenetration using auxiliary ligands of different lengths. Based on the actual column breakthrough experiments, FJU-111 can achieve separation C2H2/CO2 mixture, with a separation selective of 2.2. Calculation of the binding energy shows that C-H…O interactions between guest and O atom from NDI ligand play a dominant role in elective recognition of acetylene.