Two metal-organic frameworks based on tetracarboxylic ligand exhibiting high performance for gas adsorption and separation

Developing porous materials for purification of acetylene is of great significance, but remains challenging. Currently, the use of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for gas adsorption separation has received substantial research interest. Herein, based on the tetracarboxylic acid ligand H4TPTA ([1,1':3′,1″-terphenyl]-4,4′,4″,6′-tetracarboxylic acid), two MOFs (ErTPTA and CdTPTA) constructed by trinuclear cluster secondly building units (SBUs) have been successfully synthesized. They are three dimensional (3D) framework with 1D rhomboid channels, demonstrating a (4,8)-connected scu network. A series of gas adsorption tests were performed and the both compounds exhibited outstanding gas selective adsorption performance. Accordingly, the ideal adsorption solution theory (IAST) is used to simulate the adsorption selectivity, the selectivity of CdTPTA for CO2/CH4 is 11.85 (0.5:0.5) and 17.02 (0.05:0.95), and for C2H2/CH4 is 11.81 (0.5:0.5); the selectivity of ErTPTA for C2H2/CO2 is 4.45 (0.5:0.5).