Evidence of Gate-Opening on Xenon Adsorption on ZIF-8 An Adsorption and Computer Simulation Study

Abstract

We report on experimental (thermodynamics and kinetics) and computer simulation results for Xe sorption in ZIF-8. At temperatures below ∼145 K, there are two substeps present in adsorption isotherms (before saturation is reached). The substep that occurs at higher loadings was identified as corresponding to ZIF-8’s gate-opening transition. Above 145 K, this higher-loading substep is no longer resolvable. We determined the isosteric heat of adsorption for this system and obtained a value of 244 meV for sorption on the more strongly binding sites in the ZIF-8. We found that there is a peak in the isosteric heat of adsorption, as a function of sorbent loading, associated with the gate-opening transition. We estimated the heat of transition for gate-opening to have an upper bound of ∼30 meV. Our results for the isotherms and the isosteric heats are compared with those from our Monte Carlo computer simulations, obtained using both the structure of ZIF-8 before and after the gate-opening transition and a new set of mixed Lennard-Jones parameters. We conducted measurements for the sorption kinetics for this system. We found that, while the sorption occurs faster as the loading increases before the gate-opening transition, the equilibration times increase with loading in the gate-opening region, resulting in an unusual nonmonotonic behavior for the variation of this quantity as a function of sorbent loading.

Publication
The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Dinuka H. Gallaba
Dinuka H. Gallaba
Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics

My research interests include gas adsorption, energy storage and sensor applications of Metal Organic Frameworks and Transition Metal Dichalcogenide.

Related