Improvements to the production of ZIF-94; a case study in MOF scale-up

The ability to produce large scale quantities of MOF materials is essential for the commercialisation of these frameworks to continue. Herein we report how the production of ZIF-94 can be improved from a ∼1 g laboratory preparation to a scalable procedure allowing for large scale production of the desired framework. The synthesis of ZIF-94 was completed at room temperature, atmospheric pressure and without the use of DMF as a solvent. This method offers improvements over the current literature synthesis routes and affords a product at 18 wt% solids. To demonstrate the robustness of the derived methodology a 60 g, large scale, batch of this framework was produced which possessed a surface area of 468 m² g⁻¹. This large scale sample has superior CO₂ uptake of 3.3 mmol g⁻¹ at 1 bar, an improvement of 30% over literature reports.