Figure 11: Gas separation performance for AgZIF-62 at different composite states (ZIF-zni vs ZIF glass) for a)CO2, N2 and CH4 based separation, b)ethylene/ethane-based separation, and c)propylene/propane-based separation.
Further analysis of the effect of Ag-loaded thermally treated ZIF type (ZIF-zni and amorphous ZIF glass) on gas separation performance was also studied, as can be seen in Figure 11. The performance of the presence of Ag nanoparticles in ZIF-62 glass was also compared to pure ZIF-62 glass. The selectivity of all gas pairs studied shows no significant increase when the pure 6FDA-DAM polymer was loaded with mZIF-62-a, despite an increase in gas permeability. This may be attributed to possible void formation between mZIF-62-a towards its surrounding 6FDA-DAM polymer matrix. The gas performance of all gas pairs for 6FDA-DAM mixed membrane systems loaded with silver nanoparticles (mAgZIF-62-a and mAgZIF-62-c) consistently show improvements in both selectivity and permeability no matter the ZIF types (ZIF-zni or amorphous ZIF glass). This demonstrates the accessibility of silver in thermally treated ZIF-62 irrespective of phase, which is important to ensure that the silver can be accessed for other applications too. The accessibility of silver for both ZIF-zni and amorphous ZIF glass also demonstrates that silver nanoparticle immobilisation/functionalisation can be applied for both ZIF material types to suit their respective future applications.