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 CO2 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 CO2 uptake, especially at low CO2 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 N2 (19.8 at 1 bar and 44 at 0.15 bar), reversible CO2 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 CO2 capture, which demonstrates a new way for large-scale application of MOFs in the near future