Synthesis of benzotriazole functionalized ZIF-8 by postsynthetic modification for enhanced CH4 and CO2 uptakes

Abstract

In this work, a series of functionalized ZIF-8 were synthesized via incorporation of benzotriazole ligands into the framework with a post-synthetic method. The crystal structure and porosity were preserved for all functionalized samples. Although a relatively low percentage of ligand exchange (approximately 10–22%) was observed due to steric and kinetic effects, a remarkable improvement was found in CO2 and CH4 uptake capacities due to the incorporation of more polar N sites into the structure and the change in pore size of the frameworks. The resulting ZIF-8-S5 exhibited 45.17(CO2) and 15.08 (CH4) cm3 g− 1 at 273 K under 1.2 bar, which corresponds to an enhancement of 20 and 35% compared to pristine ZIF-8. Further, all functionalized samples showed the significant improvement of selective CO2 over N2.