Customizing Metal-Organic Frameworks by Lego-Brick Strategy for One-Step Purification of Ethylene from a Quaternary...

One-step purification of ethylene (C₂ H₄ ) from a quaternary gas mixture of C₂ H₆ /C₂ H₄ /C₂ H₂ /CO₂ by adsorption is a promising separation process, yet developing adsorbents that synergistically capture various gas impurities remains challenging. Herein, a Lego-brick strategy is proposed to customize pore chemistry in a unified framework material. The ethane-selective MOF platform is further modified with customized binding sites to specifically adsorb acetylene and carbon dioxide, thus one-step purification of C₂ H₄ with high productivity of polymer-grade product (134 mol kg^-1 ) is achieved on the assembly of porous coordination polymer-2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (PCP-FDCA) and PCP-5-aminoisophthalic acid (IPA-NH₂ ). Computational studies verify that the low-polarity surface of this MOFs-based platform provides a delicate environment for C₂ H₆ recognition, and the specific binding sites (FDCA and IPA-NH₂ ) exhibit favorable trapping of C₂ H₂ and CO₂ via CH^δ+ ···O^δ- and C^δ+ ···N^δ- electrostatic interactions, respectively. The proposed Lego-brick strategy to customize binding sites within the MOFs structure provides new ideas for the design of adsorbents for compounded separation tasks.