Facile Approach to Graft Ionic Liquid into MOF for Improving the Efficiency of CO₂ Chemical Fixation

This work describes a facile approach to modify metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with ionic liquids (ILs), rendering them as useful heterogeneous catalysts for CO₂ chemical fixation. An amino-functionalized imidazolium-based ionic liquid is firmly grafted into the porous MOF, MIL-101-SO₃H by the acid-base attraction between positively charged ammonium groups on the IL and negatively charged sulfonate groups from the MOF. Analyses by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, ¹H NMR, and N₂ sorption experiments reveal the MOF-supported ionic liquid (denoted as IL@MOF) material remains intact while functioning as a recyclable heterogeneous catalyst that can efficiently convert CO₂ and epichlorohydrin into chloropropene carbonate without the addition of a cocatalyst.