High throughput screening of pure silica zeolites for CF4 capture from electronics industry gas

Abstract

The capture and separation of CF₄ from CF₄/N₂ mixture gas is a crucial issue in the electronics industry, as CF₄ is a commonly used etching gas and the ratio of CF₄ to N₂ directly affects process efficiency. Utilizing high-throughput computational screening techniques and grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations, we comprehensively screened and assessed 247 types of pure silicon zeolite materials to determine their adsorption and separation performance for CF₄/N₂ mixtures. Based on screening, the relationships between the structural parameters and adsorption and separation properties were meticulously investigated. Four indicators including adsorption selectivity, working capacity, adsorbent performance score (APS), and regenerability (R%) were used to evaluate the performance of adsorbents. Based on the evaluation, we selected the top three best-performing zeolite structures for vacuum swing adsorption (LEV, AWW and ESV) and pressure swing adsorption (AVL, ZON, and ERI) processes respectively. Also, we studied the preferable adsorption sites of CF₄ and N₂ in the selected zeolite structures through centroid density distributions at the molecule level. We expect the study may provide some valuable guidance for subsequent experimental investigations on adsorption and separation of CF₄/N₂.