Formation and fine-tuning of metal-organic frameworks with carboxylic pincers for the recognition of a C2H2 tetramer and highly selective separation of C2H2/C2H4

Yuefeng Duan; Yuhang Huang; Chongqing Wang; Qian Wang; Kai Ge; Zhiyong Lu; Huijie Wang; Jingui Duan; Junfeng Bai; Wanqin Jin

doi:10.1039/d3sc00877k

Formation and fine-tuning of metal-organic frameworks with carboxylic pincers for the recognition of a C₂H₂ tetramer and highly selective separation of C₂H₂/C₂H₄

Chem Sci. 2023 Apr 3;14(17):4605-4611. doi: 10.1039/d3sc00877k. eCollection 2023 May 3.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University Nanjing 211816 China duanjingui@njtech.edu.cn.
² School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Nanjing Tech University Nanjing 211816 China bjunfeng@njtech.edu.cn.

Abstract

Highly efficient ethylene (C₂H₄) and acetylene (C₂H₂) separation is a great challenge and an important process in current industries. Herein, we finely tune a new family of 6-c metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with crab-like carboxylic pincers for the recognition of a C₂H₂ tetramer and afford NTU-72 with high adsorption C₂H₂/C₂H₄ selectivity (56-441, 298 K) as well as unprecedented recovery of both highly pure C₂H₄ (99.95%) and C₂H₂ (99.36%). Furthermore, the effective binding of a C₂H₂ tetramer by NTU-72's carboxylic pincers has been revealed by gas-loaded crystallography and Raman spectral studies. Our work provides a novel approach for the selective binding of a small molecular cluster for designing high-performance MOFs.