Scientific progress is like a relay race where each new advancement builds on the work of others. Over the years, many discoveries and technologies have made significant strides forward in our journey of understanding. Some of this work is recognized each year with the announcement of the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine. Though it is impossible to recognize every critical, deserving innovator and idea, the CAS Science Team has identified a number of discoveries with the potential to provide extensive benefits to the scientific community and the broader world. Could one of them be the next Nobel winner?

Building complex, tunable, porous material structures by self-assembly of simple molecular building blocks has remained elusive for a long time. However, since the 1990s when they were first discovered by Omar M. Yaghi and Makoto Fujita, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have proven to be a promising solution. By linking metal atoms or clusters (such as Zn or Cu) to organic compounds (such as carboxylates or imidazolates), MOFs combine precisely controlled rigid nanostructures and chemical functionalization unavailable to traditional porous materials.

By varying the nature of the metal and organic molecule building blocks as well as the preparation method (such as solvothermal or hydrothermal synthesis) and organic solvent, the MOFs can be finely tuned. Tweaking the surface area and adsorption-based properties in addition to the electronic, magnetic, and luminescent properties also leads to a diverse range of applications. What started as promising materials for gas capture, separation, storage (such as hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen), and heterogeneous catalysis, has now shown applications as biosensors/bioimaging materials, drug delivery systems, binding and removal of guest molecules, desalination/water treatment, or even semiconductors and ferroelectrics

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Photo credits: © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Nanaka Adachi NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Wed. 13 Sep 2023.

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