A Highly Connected Trinuclear Cluster Based Metal-Organic Framework for Efficient Separation of CH/CH and CH/CO.

One of the barriers for efficient gas separation is the trade-off between the selectivity and adsorption capacity. To address this issue, we synthesized an anionic trinuclear Co based 3D MOF (), which is characterized by an ultramicroporous building unit (UBU) and Lewis basic binding sites on the pore surfaces. Remarkably, the combination of the two strategies can synergistically enhance the CH adsorption capacity (182.9 cm/g at 298 K) and simultaneously achieve a high separation performance toward CH/CH and CH/CO mixtures. Besides theoretical calculations, the separation efficiencies of CH/CH and CH/CO are also demonstrated using breakthrough experiments. Density functional theory calculations have further confirmed the -OH groups and ultramicroporous building units play an important synergistic effect in efficiently capturing acetylene molecules.