The
development of porous materials for ethylene (C2H4) separation and purification, a very important separation
process in the chemical industry, is urgently needed but quite challenging.
In particular, the realization of selectivity-reversed adsorption
(namely, C2H4 is not preferentially adsorbed)
and the simultaneous capture of multinary coexisting impurities such
as ethane (C2H6) and acetylene (C2H2) will significantly simplify process design and reduce
energy and cost consumption, but such porous materials are quite difficult
to design and have not yet been fully explored. In this work, by employing
an aromatic-rich bithiophene-based tetraisophthalate ligand, we solvothermally
fabricated an anionic In(III)-based framework termed ZJNU-115 featuring In(COO)4 as an inorganic secondary building
unit as well as one-dimensional channels. Due to the absence of unsaturated
metallic sites, together with aromatic-rich channel surface decorated
with abundant hydrogen-bonding acceptors of carboxylate oxygen and
thiophene sulfur atoms, desolvated ZJNU-115 exhibited
an unusual adsorption relationship with respect to C2 hydrocarbons,
namely, simultaneous and preferable capture of C2H6 and C2H2 over C2H4 at the temperatures investigated, thus representing a rare metal–organic
framework (MOF) with the promising potential for one-step adsorption-phase
purification of C2H4 from a trinary C2 hydrocarbon mixture. Compared to a few of the MOFs reported for
such an application, ZJNU-115 displayed simultaneously
good adsorption selectivities of both C2H2 and
C2H6 over C2H4. Furthermore,
its separation potential can be postsynthetically tailored by substituting
dimethylammonium (Me2NH2
+) counterions
with tetraalkyl ammonium ions (NR4
+; R = Me,
Et, or n-Pr). More importantly, ZJNU-115 was stable in various organic solvents as well as aqueous solutions
with pH values ranging from 5 to 9, thus laying a solid foundation
for its practical applications. The design principle and the performance
regulation strategy adopted in this work will offer valuable guidance
for the contrapuntal construction of porous MOFs employed for direct
multicomponent purification of C2H4 with improved
performance.