Chlorination of a Zeolitic-Imidazolate Framework Tunes Packing and van der Waals Interaction of Carbon Dioxide for Optimized Adsorptive Separation Wee, Lik H. Rodríguez Navarro, Jorge Andrés The Supporting Information is available free of charge at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c08942. L.H.W. acknowledges the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) - Vlaanderen for a senior postdoctoral research fellowship and International Mobility fellowship under contract numbers of 12M1418N and V402319N, respectively. S.V.D.B., S.M.J.R., and J.W. acknowledge Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) - Vlaanderen for Grants 11U1914N, 12T3519N, and 1103618N as well as the Research Board of Ghent University (BOF). J.A.R.N. acknowledges generous funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy (CTQ2014- 53486-R) and FEDER from the European Union. Funding was also received from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme [ERC Consolidator Grant Agreement 647755 - DYNPOR (2015−2020)]. J.A.M. and C.E.A.K. gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Flemish Government (Long-term structural funding Methusalem and FWO support). Collaboration among universities was supported by the Belgian Government (IAP-PAI network). Molecular separation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) is of growing interest for biogas upgrading, carbon capture and utilization, methane synthesis and for purification of natural gas. Here, we report a new zeolitic-imidazolate framework (ZIF), coined COK-17, with exceptionally high affinity for the adsorption of CO2 by London dispersion forces, mediated by chlorine substituents of the imidazolate linkers. COK-17 is a new type of flexible zeolitic-imidazolate framework Zn(4,5-dichloroimidazolate)(2) with the SOD framework topology. Below 200 K it displays a metastable closed-pore phase next to its stable open-pore phase. At temperatures above 200 K, COK-17 always adopts its open-pore structure, providing unique adsorption sites for selective CO2 adsorption and packing through van der Waals interactions with the chlorine groups, lining the walls of the micropores. Localization of the adsorbed CO2 molecules by Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction data and periodic density functional theory calculations revealed the presence and nature of different adsorption sites. In agreement with experimental data, grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations of adsorption isotherms of CO2 and CH4 in COK-17 confirmed the role of the chlorine functions of the linkers and demonstrated the superiority of COK-17 compared to other adsorbents such as ZIF-8 and ZIF-71. 2021-05-04T10:18:45Z 2021-05-04T10:18:45Z 2021-02-16 info:eu-repo/semantics/article J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 13, 4962–4968. [https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jacs.0c08942] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/68299 10.1021/jacs.0c08942 eng info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/647755 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España American Chemical Society