High-Performance Carbon Capture with Fluorine-Tailored Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes

Increasing energy consumption and climate change present an urgent global challenge to achieve carbon neutrality, with CO2 capture as a top priority. Among various carbon capture technologies, CO2 membrane separation stands out for its simplicity and energy efficiency in applications including gas purification and industrial gas recovery. Herein, a series of fluorine-tailored porous carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes derived from precisely designed precursors, achieving a well-balanced high permeability and selectivity for CO2 separation are developed. Incorporating bent terphenyl monomers and both aliphatic/aromatic trifluoromethyl groups disrupted dense chain packing and promoted pore formation with enhanced permeability and selectivity for CO2 separation. The TFM-550 membrane, derived from a fluorinated stretched polymer backbone precursor, exhibits exceptional performance with a CO2 permeability of 47 190 +/- 3204 Barrer and a CO2/N-2 selectivity of 28.3 +/- 5.7, while TFM-800 presented a higher selectivity of 71.8 +/- 11.5, surpassing the 2019 upper bound. Furthermore, under flue gas conditions (CO2/O-2/N-2 = 1/1/4 in molar ratio), the CMS membrane demonstrate high CO2 permeability of 36,204 +/- 2,235 Barrer and outstanding CO2/N-2 selectivity of 35.3 +/- 1.8. The results here highlight the effectiveness of fluorine tailoring and the potential of fluorinated CMS membranes for sustainable industrial carbon capture applications.