Transforming Porous Silica Nanoparticles into Porous Liquids with Different Canopy Structures for CO2 Capture

Porous liquids (PLs) have both liquid fluidity and solid porosity, thereby offering a variety of applications, such as gas sorption and separation, homogeneous catalysis, energy storage, and so forth. In this research, canopies with varying structures were utilized to modify porous silica nanoparticles to develop Type I PLs. According to experimental results, the molecular weight of canopies should be high enough to maintain the porous materials in the liquid state at room temperature. Characterization results revealed that PL_1_M2070 and PL_1_AC1815 displayed low viscosity and good fluidity. Both low temperature and high pressure positively influenced CO2 capacity. The cavity occupancy resulted in poorer sorption capacity of PLs with branched canopies in comparison with that with linear canopies. Furthermore, the sorption capacity of PL_1_M2070 was 90.5% of the original CO2 sorption capacity after 10 sorption/desorption cycles, indicating excellent recyclability.

Automated summary

The research focused on developing Type I porous liquids (PLs) by modifying porous silica nanoparticles with canopies of varying structures to achieve low viscosity and good fluidity. The experimental results showed that high molecular weight canopies were necessary to maintain the porous materials in a liquid state at room temperature, with the PLs displaying excellent CO2 sorption capacity and recyclability. Low temperature and high pressure positively influenced the CO2 capacity of the PLs.