Tuning the adsorption behaviors of water, methanol, and ethanol in a porous material by varying the flexibility of substituted groups.

Exploring the adsorption and separation of water, methanol, and ethanol is important concerning the use of a sustainable energy source from biofuel. In this paper, the effects of the flexibility of substituted groups have been studied based on three iso-reticular metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), in which the pore surface is decorated with propargyl (-CH2-C[triple bond, length as m-dash]CH), allyl (-CH2-CH[double bond, length as m-dash]CH2), and propyl (-CH2-CH2-CH3) groups respectively. These substituted groups stretch into the channel, acting as gates, and the gate-opening for guests is controlled by the flexibility as well as host-guest interactions. Our study results indicate that (i) the adsorption capacity of water, methanol and ethanol enhances accordingly with the increase of the flexibility of substituted groups; (ii) the adsorptive discrimination of water, methanol, and ethanol on this porous sorbent could be tuned by varying the substituted groups.