Gas separation in bimetallic Zn/Co-ZIF-62 glass membrane

Abstract

Metal-organic framework (MOF) glasses, are attracting increasing attention in the gas separation field due to their component flexibility, ease of processing and porous structures. In this work, a series of bimetallic MOF glass membranes were synthesized and the impact of the metal node ratio (Co/Zn) on the gas separation performance of the membranes was investigated. It is found that the replacement of Zn nodes by Co in the ZIF-62 glass membrane leads to a nonlinear increase in the separation selectivity for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Such a phenomenon corresponds to the mixed-metal node effect found in the MOF glass. Through the structural characterization results, we found that the different affinities of the central metal nodes towards gas molecules and the diversity in porosity of the Zn/Co-ZIF-62 membranes could be the two main reasons for the evolution of the gas separation properties in the ZIF-62 glass membranes. This work gives a new approach to developing MOF glass membranes with high-performance gas separation.