Carbon dioxide capture and transformation are of great importance to make cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Nanometal-organic frameworks (NMOFs) could serve as ideal fillers for polymer membranes owing to their structural diversity and regulable microenvironment of the nanocage. Herein, a bifunctional, robust, and chemically cross-linked NMOF-based membrane was successfully constructed by the postsynthetic polymerization of imidazolium-based ionic liquid (IL)-decorated UiO-66 type nanoparticles (NPs) and the isocyanate-terminated polyurethane oligomer under mild conditions. The IL-modified MOF-polymer membranes exhibit a highly selective adsorption for CO2 over N2 and CH4. In addition, the obtained membrane can also be a highly active heterogeneous catalyst for CO2 transformation by cycloaddition with epoxide under an ambient pressure.
Keywords: MOFs; catalytic cycloaddition; cross-linked membrane; gas separation; ionic liquid; polyurethane.