PREPARATION OF TYPE 2 AND TYPE 3 POROUS LIQUIDS FOR THE ABSORPTION OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS

Porous materials have been widely used in various applications from gas capture to electrochemistry. So far, the utilised materials have been of solid phase. However, it has been established that liquid phase materials are more efficient in industrial settings. Thus, engineering accessible porosity into the liquid phase can result in highly efficient and soughtafter materials. The aim of this work was to prepare Type 2 and Type 3 porous liquids for the capture of volatile organic compounds. For the former, dimeric and hexameric nanocapsules were selected due to their relatively small cavity window sizes, which would allow for the encapsulation of small VOCs, yet prevent the entrance of larger solvent molecules. To prepare Type 3 porous liquids, a commercially available Basolite® F300 MOF was selected due to its well-defined pore size and thermal stability. Two types of ionic liquid were employed: imidazolium- and phosphonium-based ionic liquids. Due to the unknown solubility of the porous solids, it was desirable to select both types of IL. Type 2 porous liquids were not successfully prepared. This was due to the presence of solvent molecules within the cavities of the nanocapsules as evidenced via mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. NMR results showed that the Zn-PgC3 nanocapsule was incapable of guest exchange. Thus, these nanocapsules were not used for the preparation of Type 2 porous liquids. On the other hand, stable colloids of Basolite® F300 with the phosphonium-based ILs were prepared. To characterise the presence of empty pores within these colloids, a biphasic dye extraction setup was used and analysed with UV-Vis spectroscopy. The results show that PL2 does not possess superior dye absorption capabilities compared to its ionic liquid counterpart, indicating that there is no intrinsic porosity within these porous liquids, or that it does not affect dye absorption.