Amino-Functionalizing Ce-Based MOF UiO-66 for Enhanced CO Adsorption and Selectivity.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOF) hold great promise for CO adsorption due to their high surface areas, tunable pore sizes, and the ability to modify their chemical properties to enhance CO affinity. MOFs tagged with functional groups either at linker or metal sites have shown improved CO uptake capacity and selectivity. This study focuses on investigating the potential of selective CO adsorption using amino functionalization of linker forming Ce-UiO-66. The physicochemical properties and characteristics of MOFs to determine the degree of amino functionalization and structural stability were examined using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Fourier transformer infra-red (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and N porosimetry and specific surface area (BET). This work unveils a novel array of results on CO, N and water vapour adsorption on Ce-UiO-66-NH. The amino-functionalized Ce-UiO-66-NH shows 63 % higher CO uptake and 84 % higher CO/N selectivity at 273 K and 1 bar over Ce-UiO-66. Ce-UiO-66-NH also shows excellent structural stability after gas and vapour sorption making Ce-UiO-66-NH potential adsorbent for CO capture.