State-of-the-art metal-organic hybrids could revolutionize materials science and chemical engineering

A new family of hybrid materials, consisting of a combination of metals and organic compounds, is changing the nature of research in the fields of solid state chemistry and materials science in only a decade after its discovery

A new family of hybrid materials, consisting of a combination of metals and organic compounds, is changing the nature of research in the fields of solid state chemistry and materials science within only a decade after its discovery, and has current applications of safe storage of highly flammable gases such as hydrogen and methane. The European Union has set as its goal to economically utilize a collection of significant forces in the field and to assemble a serious group from them through the grouping of the various fields of skills necessary to create a focused research network, and this following a conference organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF).

The new materials, called "Metal Organic Frameworks" (MOFs), represent one of the most significant breakthroughs in solid state science and whose capabilities are only now being understood, according to one of the organizers of the conference in Europe. "The field is starting to expand today and there are so many possible applications that it is difficult to decide how to prioritize them. The only limit is our imagination," says the researcher. There is no doubt that the first significant application of these materials - storage of gases - will be extremely important in view of the urgency of the development of substitutes for fossil fuels for vehicles. "For hydrogen gas, this application already exists and many new vehicle developers use these materials in the parent models of their future vehicles," says the organizer.

"Metallic organic frameworks" are porous materials with holes that are microscopic in size and resemble honeycomb on the molecular scale. This feature - the presence of a huge number of tiny holes in a relatively small volume - can be used in a variety of ways, one of which is as a reservoir for gases. The gas particles bubble into the solid and are trapped inside the pores. In the case of gas storage, the material provides the significant advantage of absorbing part of the gas pressure resulting from the separations. This fact enables the future use of hydrogen as a source of available energy that is not from a fossil source such as fuel cells, or even genetically modified plants, and its use as fuel for the automotive industry, while compressed gas tanks are dangerous and unsuitable for this purpose. The significant difference is that the amount of gas stored in compressed tanks at a pressure of 200 atmospheres can fit into a vessel made of the porous material with the same dimensions and at a pressure of only 30 atmospheres - a very significant safety difference.

The porous nature of the new material allows it to be used in a completely different way as a catalyst to accelerate chemical reactions for a wide variety of materials production and uses in the field of pharmacy, although this field, according to the lead researcher, is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, the field receives a lot of interest beyond the academic community from serious industrial companies, accompanied by an important development at the European conference thanks to the support of the large German chemical company BASF. This assistance resulted in a lot of support in the aforementioned field of applications and aroused a lot of interest among other companies as well.

However, several challenges still remain before this capability is realized, the first of which is gathering research and development teams with the appropriate skills. As the inventor said, many of these researchers are indeed present, but they must expand their research horizons and look at the broader picture, beyond their areas of expertise. There is, of course, also the initial technological challenge in learning how these materials are created and applying the answer to this question for planning and design that best suits certain needs. These new materials are crystalline solids obtained in very regular patterns from solutions, similar to how salts and sugars are obtained - an extremely important industrial advantage for efficiency, convenience and production price. Researchers need to learn how to tune the initial conditions to obtain the composition and crystallinity values ​​they desire for the various applications.

For the information of the European Science Foundation