Fabrication of cuprous nanoparticles in MIL-101: an efficient adsorbent for the separation of olefin-paraffin mixtures

Various amounts of Cu+ nanoparticles were successfully deposited to the pores of metal-organic frameworks MIL-101 with a doublesolvent method. An optimized, cuprous-loadedMIL-101 was shown to have an enhanced ethylene adsorption capacity and higher ethyleneethane selectivity (14.0), compared to pure MIL-101 (1.6). The great improvement in selectivity can be attributed to the newly generated nano-sized cuprous chloride particles that can selectively interact with the carbon-carbon double bond in ethylene through pi-complexation.