Marvellous metal-organics

Work carried out by Martin Schröder and his co-workers into the copper-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has been included by the influential journal Nature as one of the ‘Research Highlights’ of 2009. There are numerous potential applications for MOFs including hydrogen storage which is a huge area of interest for the automotive industry in particular.

A series of copper-based MOFs were studied. The correlation of the hydrogen uptake capacity and the heat of adsorption of binding in these materials with pore metrics and internal functional groups on the ligand was investigated. These factors allowed optimisation of structure and pore size to give MOFs showing a storage capacity of 7.8 wt%.

The inclusion of this work as one of the Research Highlights in Nature demonstrates the impact of this research on the scientific community and its relevance to the continuing search for alternative fuels.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7276/pdf/462961a.pdf