The research team led by Shao Lu, a professor from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and a member of the State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, has developed new polymer-woven metal–organic framework (pw-MOF) glass membranes that achieve exceptional pressure-tolerant carbon capture.
Their work, titled Synthesizing Polymer-Woven Metal-Organic Framework Glass Membranes for Exceptional Pressure-Tolerant Carbon Capture, has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Conventional MOF glass membranes suffer from poor pore connectivity, insufficient porosity, and limited pressure tolerance, which constrain their sustainable deployment in flue-gas decarbonization and natural-gas purification.
To address these challenges, Professor Shao's team drew inspiration from the woven architecture of spider silk and synthesized new polymer-woven MOF glasses. During melting, the woven polymer prevents lattice deformation while nano-interfacial phase separation (nano-IS) evolves, enabling the effective tuning of kinetic mass-transfer efficiency and thermodynamic polar adsorption.
The resulting pw-MOF glass membranes feature interconnected sub-nanometer through-channel networks and high-density polar domains along polymer chains for adsorption.
The membranes deliver record-setting performance in CO₂/N₂ and CO₂/CH₄ separations, surpassing the current upper bounds. The woven-reinforced framework endows the pw-MOF glass membranes with unprecedented pressure tolerance up to 7.5 atm, whereas existing MOF membranes typically fail around 1 atm.
HIT is the first corresponding institution. Yang Yan, a doctoral student at HIT's School of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, is the first author. Professor Shao, Assistant Researcher Jiang Xu, and Associate Professor Cher Hon Lau (University of Edinburgh) are co-corresponding authors. HIT graduate students Liu Weihao and Guo Lei, as well as undergraduate student Hao Jingyan, also participated in some of the research work.
The research achievements. [Photo/hit.edu.cn]