Imperial Chemistry

ALT “The work of the prize winners laid the foundation for a vibrant international field of research in novel metal-organic frameworks, and more than 100,000 MOF structures have been reported to date. “The applications of MOFs all stem from their porosity – one gram of a MOF material can have the same surface area inside its pores as a football pitch. “The field of MOFs all began with the research by Robson in the early 1990s who designed coordination polymers that could be engineered to have pores.”

ALT “Lots of chemists have been wondering when metal-organic frameworks would get the Nobel Prize, and it’s finally happened!” “Their discovery has enabled a whole range of applications, from gas storage and separations to drug delivery, and also opened-up other areas, including porous liquids – liquids with holes in - which are showing promise in carbon capture and catalysis. “They are already seeing commercial use, for example, for carbon capture from flue gas, keeping fruit fresh, and for storing reactive gases for the semi-conductor industry. They also have potential for water harvesting - for example they are being trialled in the desert for collecting clean water from the air. You can only imagine that their use in real-world applications would continue to expand in the future.”