Nordic Life Science 1
THE NOBEL PRIZE // CHEMISTRY PHOTO JUSTINAS AUSKE
LIS/VILNIUS UNIVERSITY 48 “MOFs have become one of the most exciting areas in materials science, opening up possibilities for more efficient gas capture and storage, catalysis, and even quantum devices.” Mantas Šimėnas, Professor, Vilnius University In parallel to Kitagawa’s discoveries, Omar Yaghi at Arizona State University, USA, set out to find a more controlled way of creating materials using rational design. In 1995 he published the structure of two different two-dimensional materials, that were like nets, held together by copper or cobalt. The latter was so stable that it could be heated to 350°C without collapsing. He described his findings in Nature and also coined the name “metal-organic framework”. This term is now used to describe extended and ordered molecular structures that potentially contain cavities and are built from metals and organic molecules, explains the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1999, Yaghi also presented an extremely spacious and stable molecular construction, MOF-5 (a couple of grams of which holds an area as big as a football pitch). Kitagawa also presented a material that could change shape when filled with water or methane, and when it was emptied it returned to its original form. In 2002 and 2003, in articles in Nature and Science, Yaghi showed that it is possible to modify and change MOFs in a rational manner, giving them different properties. Water from desert air Since these findings were discovered, researchers have developed tens of thousands of different MOFs. As an example, Yaghi’s research group have harvested water from the desert air of Arizona. During the night, their MOF material captured water vapor from the air and when dawn came and the sun heated the material, they were able to collect the water. Many companies are also investing in mass production and commercialization of different MOFs, for example within the electronics industry where MOF materials can contain some of the toxic gases required to produce semiconductors. Companies are also testing materials that can capture carbon dioxide from factories and power stations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They can also act as filters to remove contaminants from water in wastewater treatment. The rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are expected to accelerate the field of MOFs even further, enabling rapid discovery of optimal structures for specific applications. However, the mass production and new fields of applications have also raised concerns about environmental and health risks, for example through accidental release or deposition of MOFs into the environment that could trigger a range of biological effects. One of the challenges of MOFs has been the lack of clean and sustainable methods to develop the MOF material on an industrial scale. When it comes to future applications of MOFs Šimėnas expects a broader industrial applications, he says, “Contributing to improved gas separation and carbon dioxide capture, serving as replacements for conventional catalytic materials, and enabling closer integration with biological systems.” Life science applications There are many actual and potential life science applications of MOFs, including biosensors, drug delivery, imaging, diagnostics, and in pharmaceutical synthesis. “MOFs can for example be employed for targeted drug delivery, as their structures can be tuned to release therapeutic