Chemistry’s Super Sponges Finally Hit The Market
Invented more than three decades ago, metal–organic frameworks are becoming commercial materials.
In May this year, a US$150-million factory making filters to capture carbon dioxide opened in Burnaby, Canada. Called Redwood, after the world’s tallest trees, the facility aims to make enough filters to capture 10 million tonnes of CO2 each year, says its operator, Svante Technologies, which refers to the production line as a gigafactory.
The factory’s opening also signals a commercial breakthrough for an intriguing class of super-sponge material invented more than 30 years ago that has attracted huge academic interest and hype — but faltered commercially. Porous, powder-like solids known as metal–organic frameworks, or MOFs, have wowed academic chemists for decades.
MOFs are structured like molecular scaffolding, containing vast caverns of internal space — they are the world’s most porous solid materials. One gram of MOF powder can have an internal surface area the size of a football field.
Over the past three decades, research chemists have created more than 100,000 MOF varieties in the laboratory, and have tested the powders’ capacity to store gases, act as catalysts, trap toxic chemicals from water and deliver drugs, among many other potential uses. Scientists have also created related materials called covalent organic frameworks, or COFs. But despite huge academic interest, chemists have not managed to turn the materials into industrial-scale products. (…)
