Metal-Organic Frameworks, Chemistry's New Miracle Materials
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly porous, crystalline materials capable of trapping substances like greenhouse gases or harvesting water from dry air. Developed by chemist Omar Yaghi, these materials are being scaled for practical applications such as providing water to arid regions using solar energy.
Why it matters
This technology offers a sustainable, scalable solution to global water scarcity and carbon capture challenges.
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are a revolutionary new class of crystalline solids that can be designed to trap myriad kinds of matter, including greenhouse gases, or to be used as nanosized drug carriers. They can also pull water from desert air.
A chief characteristic of MOFs, which some have been called “miracle materials,” is how much empty space they comprise. Often described in the scientific literature as “ultra highly porous,” the sponge-like nano-structures have the greatest internal surface area of any known material. Unfolded and spread flat, a single gram of MOF could cover a football field.
MOFs, as well as other novel chemical structures, including covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), have sprung from a field called reticular chemistry—a name coined by its pioneer, Berkeley chemist Omar Yaghi, who has appointments at both Cal and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
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