Enhancement of CO 2 adsorption and separation in basic ionic liquid/ZIF-8 with core-shell structure.

A novel strategy was proposed to improve the performance of gas separation in nano-materials, by fabricating a core-shell structure out of the basic ionic liquid ([Emim] 2 [IDA]) and zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8). The [Emim] 2 [IDA]/ZIF-8 exhibits a remarkable CO 2 adsorption capacity of 14 cm 3 g -1 at 298 K and 20 kPa, the ideal selectivity of CO 2 /N 2 is as high as 10 4 and CO 2 /CH 4 is 348 at 298 K and 100 kPa, which are much higher than the CO 2 adsorption capacity (4.3 cm 3 g -1 ) and the selectivity ( S CO 2 /N 2 = 7.4, S CO 2 /CH 4 = 2.7) of ZIF-8. This work could pave the way for designing advanced nanostructures tailored for gas separation.