Introducing halogen-bonded gates into zeolitic frameworks for efficient benzene/cyclohexene/cyclohexane separation
Zi-Jun Liang, Fang-Di Dong, Tianyu Jia, Kai Zheng, Ding-Yi Hu, Xi Ping Feng, Wen‐Yu Su, Zhi‐Shuo Wang, Mu‐Yang Zhou, Zi-Luo Fang, Dong‐Dong Zhou, Jie‐Peng Zhang, Xiao‐Ming Chen
Abstract
cyclic hydrocarbons (benzene, cyclohexene, and cyclohexane) is one of the most challenging chemical processes in the petrochemical industry. Herein, we design and synthesize a new SOD-topology metal azolate framework (MAF) with aperture gating behaviour controlled by C-Br⋯N halogen bonds, which exhibits distinct temperature- and guest-dependent adsorption behaviours for benzene/cyclohexene/cyclohexane. More importantly, the MAF enables the efficient purification of benzene from its binary and ternary mixtures (selectivity up to 113 ± 2; purity up to 98% +), which is the highest record for benzene/cyclohexane/cyclohexene separation to date. Single-crystal diffraction analyses and computational simulations revealed that halogen bonds play a critical role in the gating and diffusion process, which is the first example of halogen-bonding controlled gating for highly effective adsorptive separation.