3.1. Silver adsorption and effects on ZIF-62 crystal structure
The pure ZIF-62 crystal structure was prepared in three different
benzimidazole to imidazole ratios using a previously reported method
with slight changes.[27] This is to study the
effects of silver interactions on the thermal dynamics of these
structures at different melting points. Thermal dynamics in this context
can be defined as the structural dynamics that occur upon the
introduction/removal of heat. The as-synthesized ZIF-62 were labelled as
ZIF-62-a, ZIF-62-b, and ZIF-62-c in increasing benzimidazole ratio
within the structure. The benzimidazole (bIm) to imidazole (Im) ratio in
ZIF-62 can usually be denoted in the form of
Zn(Im)2-x(bIm)x. The actual
benzimidazole to imidazole ratio was measured using liquid state NMR as
per Table 2.
Table 2: Measured benzimidazole to imidazole ratio for different
variation of ZIF-62 via NMR