“Explosive” synthesis of metal-formate frameworks for methane capture: an experimental and computational study

In this work, we show a solvent-free “explosive” synthesis (SFES) method for the ultrafast and low-cost synthesis of metal-formate frameworks (MFFs). A combination of experiments and in-depth molecular modelling analysis – using grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations – of the adsorption performance of the synthesized nickel-formate framework (Ni-FA) revealed extremely high quality products with permanent porosity, prominent CH4/N2 selectivity (ca. 6.0), and good CH4 adsorption capacity (ca. 0.80 mmol g−1 or 33.97 cm3 cm−3) at 1 bar and 298 K. This performance is superior to those of many other state-of-the-art porous materials.