Combinatorics

Nanotechnology

Organic chemistry

Metal-organic framework

Gas separation

Mathematics

Membrane

Porosity

Analytical Chemistry (journal)

Adsorption

Physical chemistry

Chemistry

Materials science

Confined space

Partition (number theory)

Chromatography

Biochemistry

Characterisation of pore space in soil

Gravimetric analysis

Journal of the American Chemical Society

The pore space partition (PSP) approach has been employed to realize a novel porous MOF (FJU-90) with dual functionalities for the challenging C2H2/CO2 separation under ambient conditions. By virtue of a triangular ligand (Tripp = 2,4,6-tris(4-pyridyl)pyridine), the cylindrical channels in the original FJU-88 have been partitioned into uniformly interconnected pore cavities, leading to the dramatically reduced pore apertures from 12.0 × 9.4 to 5.4 × 5.1 Å2. Narrowing down the pore sizes, the resulting activated FJU-90a takes up a very large amount of C2H2 (180 cm3 g–1) but much less of CO2 (103 cm3 g–1) at 298 K and 1 bar, demonstrating it to be the best porous MOF material for this C2H2/CO2 (50%:50%) separation in terms of the C2H2 gravimetric productivity. IAST calculations, molecular modeling studies, and simulated and experimental breakthrough experiments comprehensively demonstrate that the pore space partition strategy is a very powerful approach to constructing MOFs with dual functionality for challenging gas separation.

Pore Space Partition within a Metal–Organic Framework for Highly Efficient C2H2/CO2 Separation