Computation-Ready, Experimental Covalent Organic Framework for Methane Delivery: Screening and Material Design

CH4 storage associated with adsorbed natural gas technology attracts considerable researches on finding porous materials with remarkable CH4 delivery performance. In this work, we update the online accessible computation-ready, experimental (CoRE) covalent organic frameworks (COFs) database with 280 COFs in 12 topologies. All framework structures are constructed and compiled from the respective experimental studies and are further evaluated for CH4 delivery. The highest deliverable capacity (DC) between 65 and 5.8 bar among the CoRE COFs is 190 v(STP)/v at 298 K achieved by 3D PI-COF-4. Structure–property relationships show that large volumetric surface area generally benefits CH4 delivery. 2D-COFs can also be top performing materials if constructing their pore channels is passable in three dimensions, as the volumetric surface area will be increased accordingly. This idea can be realized by enlarging the interlayer spacings of 2D-COFs. We also evaluate the DC of CoRE COFs under conditions of 233 K, 65 bar (storage) and 358 K, 5.8 bar (discharge). The highest DC obtained from the CoRE COFs and the designed 2D-COFs are 314 and 337 v(STP)/v, respectively.