Adsorption and diffusion of CO2 and CH4 in covalent organic frameworks: an MC/MD simulation study

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a promising gas separation material which have been developed recently. In this work, we have used grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the adsorption and diffusion properties of CO2 and CH4 in five recent synthesised COF materials. We have also considered the properties of amino-modified COFs by adding –NH2 group to the five COFs. The adsorption isotherm, adsorption/diffusion selectivity, self/transport diffusion coefficients have been examined and discussed. All of the five COFs exhibit promising adsorption selectivity which is higher than common nanoporous materials. An S-shaped adsorption isotherm can be found for CO2 instead of CH4 adsorption. The introduction of –NH2 group is effective at low pressure region (<200 kPa). The diffusion coefficients are similar for TS-COFs but increase with the pore size for PI-COFs, and the diffusion coefficients seem less dependent on the –NH2 groups.