Design Principles Guiding Solvent Size Selection in ZIF-Based Type 3 Porous Liquids for Permanent Porosity

Abstract

Porous liquids (PLs), which are solvent-based systems that contain permanent porosity due to the incorporation of a solid porous host, are of significant interest for the capture of greenhouse gases, including CO₂. Type 3 PLs formed by using metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) as the nanoporous host provide a high degree of chemical turnability for gas capture. However, pore aperture fluctuation, such as gate-opening in zeolitic imidazole framework (ZIF) MOFs, complicates the ability to keep the MOF pores available for gas adsorption. Therefore, an understanding of the solvent molecular size required to ensure exclusion from MOFs in ZIF-based Type 3 PLs is needed. Through a combined computational and experimental approach, the solvent-pore accessibility of exemplar MOF ZIF–8 was examined. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations identified that the lowest-energy solvent–ZIF interaction occurred at the pore aperture. Experimental density measurements of ZIF–8 dispersed in various-sized solvents showed that ZIF–8 adsorbed solvent molecules up to 2 Å larger than the crystallographic pore aperture. Density analysis of ZIF dispersions was further applied to a series of possible ZIF-based PLs, including ZIF–67, −69, −71(RHO), and −71(SOD), to examine the structure–property relationships governing solvent exclusion, which identified eight new ZIF-based Type 3 PL compositions. Solvent exclusion was driven by pore aperture expansion across all ZIFs, and the degree of expansion, as well as water exclusion, was influenced by ligand functionalization. Using these results, a design principle was formulated to guide the formation of future ZIF-based Type 3 PLs that ensures solvent-free pores and availability for gas adsorption.