The Effects of Functional Groups and Missing Linkers on the Adsorption Capacity of Aromatic Hydrocarbons in UiO-66 Thin Films

Abstract

The adsorption of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene isomers, also known as BTEX, from the gas phase into porous thin films of the metal-organic framework UiO-66-X, where X = H, NH2, and NO2, was measured to quantify adsorption capacity. The thin films were grown by a vapor-conversion method onto Au-coated quartz microbalance crystals. The MOF thin films were characterized by IR and Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The thin films were activated by heating under high vacuum and exposed to each gas to calculate the Henry's constant. The results demonstrate that the functional groups in the organic linker and missing-linkers both play important roles in the adsorption capacity. Several trends can be observed in the data. First, all the compounds in the BTEX family have lower Henry's constants in the UiO-66-H films compared to the UiO-66-NH2 and UiO-66-NO2 films, which can largely be attributed to the absence of a functional group on the linker. Second, at 25 degrees C, the Henry's constants for all the BTEX compounds in UiO-66-NO2 films are larger than UiO-66-NH2 films. Third, the role of missing linkers is addressed by comparing the measured adsorption capacity to ideal pore filling. The results show that the UiO-66-H films are the most defect-free and the UiO-66-NO2 films have the most missing linker defects.

Description
Keywords
BTEX adsorption, Henry&#8217, s constant, metal&#8211, organic framework, thin films, Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear, Chemistry
Citation
Shankwitz, J., Speed, D., Sinanan, D., Szulczewski, G. (2020): The Effects of Functional Groups and Missing Linkers on the Adsorption Capacity of Aromatic Hydrocarbons in UiO-66 Thin Films. Inorganics. 9(1).