Highly Efficient Synthesis of a Moisture-Stable Nitrogen-Abundant Metal–Organic Framework (MOF) for Large-Scale CO2 Capture

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) hold great potential as CO 2 adsorbents; however, the long reaction time that is required for the preparation of MOFs by a hydrothermal or solvothermal method is a hurdle for large-scale production. In this work, we synthesize a moisture-stable nitrogen-abundant cobalt-based MOF, i.e., Co-PL-1, using microwave irradiation for the first time (denoted as MW-Co-PL-1). Compared to hydrothermal synthesis, which always requires 3 days at 180 °C, only 30 min at the same temperature is required for the microwave synthesis. The resulting MW-Co-PL-1 shows high CO 2 uptake, especially at low CO 2 partial pressure (89 mg g –1 at 298 K, 1 bar and 53 mg g –1 at 298 K, 0.15 bar), good capture selectivity against N 2 (19.8 at 1 bar and 44 at 0.15 bar), reversible CO 2 uptake during consecutive adsorption–desorption cycles, and very robust structure stability under moisture conditions. The highly efficient synthesis, together with great performance, makes the microwave synthesis of Co-PL-1 promising for large-scale CO 2 capture, which demonstrates a new way for large-scale application of MOFs in the near future.