Cold plasma treatment of metal organic framework for carbon capture applications

Throughout recent centuries, technological advancements have led to an increasing issue of climate change, substantially due to carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. It is imperative that CO2 emissions are reduced. Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) has the potential to transform CO₂ into valuable products, such as fuels, chemicals, and building materials, or to use it directly in industrial processes by capturing carbon at the emission source or by directly removing it from the atmosphere. The widespread employment of these methods, however, is limited by high costs and low efficiencies. Using materials with already high adsorption and separation ability could directly lower this cost. Metal-organic framework (MOF), crystalline structures shown to be highly active catalysts for carbon dioxide cyclic reactions, are currently under exploration for use in CCU. MOFs have increasingly gained popularity due to their diverse applications and key features, including drug delivery, catalysis, use as sensors, and more. Prior research has shown that atmospheric plasma treatment can be used to introduce missing linker defects, increasing adsorption abilities and exposing more of the MOF's active sites, without affecting the MOF’s overall structure or stability. In this study, we investigate the effects of atmospheric plasma surface treatment on the MOFs UiO-66 and UiO-67. The MOFs are characterized before and after plasma treatment to observe changes in chemical composition, structure, functional groups, band gap, and other properties of the substance. In the project's second phase, the use of a laboratory-made atmospheric plasma reactor will be investigated to explore a significantly more cost-effective way to manipulating MOF.  The experimental results will add to the communal understanding of the effects of cold plasma treatment on MOFs relating to carbon capture and, furthermore, may suggest a more cost-effective and feasible method of modification/utilization of MOFs.