Introduction/PurposeStorage and separation of gases are one of the most challenging processes when they have to be implemented at industrial scale. Hundreds of potential materials have been tested over the past years, especially for gas storage (hydrogen and methane for fueling applications) and separation of biogas (a mixture of 55 – 75% of methane 25 – 45% of carbon dioxide). Today, MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) [1-2] are considered as the most promising materials for such applications. MOFs are hybrid, nanoporous materials with a very large surface area, in which pore sizes, shapes and adsorption energies can be almost unlimitedly tailored to fit the required adsorption characteristics.MethodsIn this work, we present simulations of methane and carbon dioxide adsorption in a wide range of MOF structures from CoRE-MOF database [3], and at variable content of humidity. Over 1000 structures have been tested using Grand Canonical Monte Carlo method (as implemented in RASPA code) to find the optimal material for the CH4/CO2 separation in conditions of increasing humidity.ResultsMOFs with pore limiting diameter (PLD) over 3.3 Å were chosen for the simulations. Due to the humid conditions, we chose structures from the middle range of hydrophilicity, kH between 5·10-2 mol/kg·Pa (CuBTC) and 5·10-6 mol/kg·Pa (ZIF-8). The initial screening allowed us to select the most promising structures for more detailed investigation. We show that 20 materials exhibit very promising selectivity (defined as the adsorbed amount of CO2­ to the amount of CH4) in the range from 100 to 900 and total uptake above 0.5 mol/kg.ConclusionsThe results provide clear information about different mechanisms of adsorption for selected structures. Furthermore, the adsorption of methane tends to be reduced with increasing humidity. Materials with a growing level of selectivity for CO2 and CH4 with increasing hydration degree are the most promising from the future application point of view.

Low frequency lattice vibrations (phonons) can be used as indicators of a variety of structural transformations. In particular, conformational changes in flexible metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can be successfully explained by analyzing materials phonon spectrum in frequency range below 200 cm-1 [1,2]. It has been shown that such lattice vibrations are responsible for pressure- and adsorption-induced gate-opening in zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and pore breathing in materials from MIL-53 family. In this work we present a phonon-based methodology to analyze MOFs deformations that can be detected in adsorption experiments but cannot be explained at the microscopic level without theoretical support based on numerical simulations.As a case study we have chosen to analyze adsorption-induced transformations in ZIF-8. The step-like adsorption isotherm observed in this material was interpreted in the literature as a signature of gate-opening (enlargement of the pore free volume) induced by the increasing number of guest molecules entering the pore. To analyze this phenomenon at the microscopic level, we first calculated and visualized normal modes of the lattice vibrations. For that, density functional theory (DFT) with PBE functional and empirical dispersion correction D3(BJ) was used. Only the modes which fulfill two criteria: (i) their frequency is below 200 cm-1, and (ii) the related lattice deformation leads to increase of the pore free volume, have been further analyzed. These deformed structures, (including one related to gate-opening, pore breathing and one which combines both deformations) were selected to serve as the adsorbent model. Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations have been performed to calculate the isotherms of adsorption in selected structures. Surprisingly, in the structure related to gate-opening, the mode, located at ~40 cm-1, and considered in the literature as the one responsible for step-like form of the isotherm did not provided an uptake larger than the undistorted structure. On the other hand, in the structure resulting from simultaneous pore breathing and gate-opening deformation the adsorption is significantly increased. Therefore, we consider that this deformation, induced by pore breathing and gate-opening phonons explains better the experimental observations..1. F. Formalik, et al., Microporous and Mesoporous Materials, (2018),2. M. R. Ryder, et al., Physical Review Letters, 113 (2014), 215502-21550

Storage and separation of gases is one of the most challenging processes when they have to be implemented at industrial scale. Hundreds of potential materials have been tested over the past years, especially for gas storage (hydrogen and methane for fueling applications) and separation of biogas (a mixture of 55 – 75% of methane 25 – 45% of carbon dioxide). Today, MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) [1-2] are considered as the most promising materials for such applications. MOFs are hybrid, nanoporous materials with a very large surface area, in which pore sizes, shapes and adsorption energies can be almost unlimitedly tailored to fit the required adsorption characteristics. A particular category of these materials are the so-called breathing MOFs, in which a reversible structural transformation (variation of pore volume, pore breathing) can be induced by temperature, pressure or interaction with adsorbate molecules. Molecular modeling is an effective way to rapidly obtain microscopic information on the mechanism of adsorption in these materials (in many cases, not accessible using traditional experimental methods) and to shorten the time necessary to implement research results in an industrial process.In the this work we will present simulations of methane and carbon dioxide adsorption in a wide range of MOF structures from CoRE-MOF database [3], and at variable content of humidity. MOFs with pore limiting diffusion (PLD) over 3.3 Å were chosen for the simulations. Due to the humid conditions we chose structures from the middle range of hydrophilicity, kH between 5·10-2 mol/kg·Pa (CuBTC) and 5·10-6 mol/kg·Pa (ZIF-8). Over 1000 structures have been tested using Grand Canonical Monte Carlo method (as implemented in RASPA code) to find the optimal material for the CH4/CO2 separation in conditions of increasing humidity. The initial screening allowed us to select the most promising structures for more detailed investigation. We show that 16 materials exhibit very promising selectivity (defined as adsorbed amount of CO2¬ to amount of CH4) in range from 50 to 440. Furthermore, adsorption of methane tends to be reduced with increasing humidity. Reference[1]S. Li, Y. G. Chung, and R. Q. Snurr, “High-Throughput Screening of Metal–Organic Frameworks for CO 2 Capture in the Presence of Water,” Langmuir, vol. 32, no. 40, pp. 10368–10376, 2016.[2]R. Krishna, “Screening metal–organic frameworks for mixture separations in fixed-bed adsorbers using a combined selectivity/capacity metric,” RSC Adv., vol. 7, no. 57, pp. 35724–35737, 2017.[3]Y. G. Chung et al., “Computation-Ready, Experimental Metal–Organic Frameworks: A Tool To Enable High-Throughput Screening of Nanoporous Crystals,” Chem. Mater., vol. 26, no. 21, pp. 6185–6192, Nov. 2014.

Phonons are quantum elastic excitations ofcrystalline solids. Classically, they correspond to thecollective vibrations of atoms in ordered periodic structures.They determine the thermodynamic properties ofsolids and their stability in the case of structural transformations.Here we review for the first time the existingexamples of the phonon analysis of adsorption-inducedtransformations occurring in microporous crystallinematerials. We discuss the role of phonons in determiningthe mechanism of the deformations. We point outthat phonon-based methodology may be used as a predictivetool in characterization of flexible microporousstructures; therefore, relevant numerical tools must bedeveloped.

Adsorption studies in flexible metal–organic frameworks are challenging and time-consuming. It ismainly because the mechanism of adsorption, defined by structural framework properties, is constantlymodified during the process, as the framework transformation depends on the adsorption uptake. Wepropose here a new approach to investigate adsorption in such complex systems, in which thesimulations of adsorption in a deforming framework are replaced by the analysis of adsorption inintermediate rigid structures. As a proof of concept we analyze carbon dioxide, hexane, and methaneadsorption in MIL-53. 19 intermediate structures were generated using geometrical interpolationbetween the open and the closed MOF forms and optimized with quantum DFT calculations. The grandcanonical Monte Carlo method was applied to calculate adsorption isotherms in all intermediatestructures. The comparison with experimental results enabled the identification of the intermediateadsorption states. The analysis of the microscopic configurations of the adsorbed molecules in thesestructures allowed us to propose a new mechanism of adsorbate evolution over the entire process.

The structural transformations of periodic structures are very often initiated by the dynamicalfluctuation of theequilibrium structure. The natural mechanical excitations in crystals are called phonons. If the energy of thesefluctuations is low, they can easily be transformed into static deformations which define new structural prop-erties of the materials. This is the case in so called gate opening transformations which modify the structure andthe adsorptive properties of porous solids. Using the example of three SOD-type zeolitic imidazolate frameworks(ZIFs) containing linker molecules with different substituents, we show that analysis of low-frequency phononsobtained from density-functional theory (DFT) calculations allows one to model the observed gate opening andto understand the microscopic mechanism of this structural transformation.

Unlike macroscopic objects, any system of nanometric size shows characteristics that strongly depend on its sizeand geometric form. It is mainly because the major part of atoms (or molecules) of nano-object is located at itssurface, and their cohesive energy is smaller than for the atoms in the bulk. Here we show that when a fluid isconfined in nano-volume, delimited by non-attractive pore walls, its density is heterogeneous, in particular closeto the pore wall, and, on average, smaller than the density of bulk fluid. This effect progressively weakens whenthe pore size increases, and totally disappears for pores larger than 5 nm. The reported observation has nontrivialinfluence on evaluation of total and excess amount of fluid adsorbed in nanopores, as these quantities aretraditionally calculated assuming the known – and homogeneous –density of the bulk fluid. Additionally, wepropose a new method of the estimations of the accessible pore volume, based on the analysis of the density ofconfined fluid. The right estimation of both: pore volume and gas density is essential for quantitative interpretationof experimental adsorption isotherms: evaluation of pore size distribution and of the adsorbed amount.Although we analyze these problems taking an example of hydrogen at 77 K, our conclusions are general andapply to any fluid confined in nanopores.