(14as) Molecule Separation and Energy Storage Using Novel Porous Material Platform

Teaching Interests:  Thermodynamics, transport, porous materials and applications

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) also known as coordination porous polymer are a series of novel porous materials which are composed of metal anodes and organic linkers through coordination bonds. MOFs usually have 3D porous structures, large surface areas and pore volume, which provide promising future in applications including molecule separation and energy conversion. Application example such as CO₂ capture from flue gas using MOFs will be shown in two scenarios, fixed bed and membrane. Unsaturated metal centers have been found to be the key for low partial pressure CO₂ adsorption. A robust hydrophobic MOF membrane showed high CO₂ permeance even under 80%RH, which is close to real flue gas condition. Proposed future work is focusing on oriented asymmetric MOF membrane for molecule separation and catalyst used in fuel cell and other electrochemical energy storage system. The unlimited pairs of metal and organic linker, chemical versatility, and tunable pore size and functionality open up great opportunity for MOFs in research frontiers of energy and environment related research.