Building ordered polymers with metal

Structured polymers called metal-organice frameworks get the chemistry Nobel.

See full article...

 

[jevandezande]

MOFs are really interesting from a chemistry perspective, potentially enabling a lot of things like gas separation and storage or as frameworks to hold catalysts that were originally developed as homogeneous catalysts. However, as a chemist I feel that this Nobel prize may have been premature. There has been very little practical application of MOFs, and I find it telling that this article talks about "potential uses of MOFs" at the end as opposed to actual uses.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are cool. As someone who worked in homogeneous catalysis during my PhD and post-doc, I always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry.

 

[PhaseShifter]

Building ordered polymers with metal
​

Ahh, now we can start a big nerd fight over whether it's better to think of MOFs as "Polymers with metal bits" or "Zeolites with organic bits."

 

[Kyuu]

Don't get me wrong, I think they are cool. As someone who worked in homogeneous catalysis during my PhD and post-doc, I always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry.

Do we know why it hasn't been able to move out of the lab? Are they difficult/expensive to synthesize in large quantities? Do they not produce the expected results when deployed at scale? Difficult/expensive to handle? Something else?

 

[Ceedave]

Nice summary, thanks!

The structures are very evocative, to me, of how silicate tetrahedra arrange to form chain, ring, sheet, and 3D structures interacting with alkali and metal cations. Silicate minerals comprise most of Earth’s crust. Of course, those crystals are on much smaller Latrice’s and not highly porous, but some of them — phylosilicate (sheet) clays and tectosilicate 3D zeolites (as mentioned above by PhaseShifter) like natrolite (edit to complete thought) are highly reactive, industrially important, and perhaps served as a template for early drafts of living-organism-like proteins.

Length scales on figures would be nice.

 

[Oldmanalex]

MOFs are really interesting from a chemistry perspective, potentially enabling a lot of things like gas separation and storage or as frameworks to hold catalysts that were originally developed as homogeneous catalysts. However, as a chemist I feel that this Nobel prize may have been premature. There has been very little practical application of MOFs, and I find it telling that this article talks about "potential uses of MOFs" at the end as opposed to actual uses.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are cool. As someone who worked in homogeneous catalysis during my PhD and post-doc, I always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry.

I do not agree. MOFs are a fundamentally new form of sold state matter, which can be engineered in all sorts of ways by chemists, and in a reasonably predictable fashion. A highly novel discovery which is going to lead in all sorts of directions over the next 25 years. And which has huge numbers of practical uses ahead of it.

 

[Albino_Boo]

So a semi organic version of a zeolite.

 

[egamadniarb]

Unlike the prior commenters who have knowledge of these things (much respect!) I can only add that’s some great outside of the blob thinking.

 

[orwelldesign]

always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry

Is it the standard for Nobel prizes to not be awarded in chemistry until a particular discovery has made that move, from lab to industry? That doesn't seem like it should be the case.

I genuinely don't know, and don't know enough to know how to look it up via the intertubes.

 

[jack lecou]

Do we know why it hasn't been able to move out of the lab? Are they difficult/expensive to synthesize in large quantities? Do they not produce the expected results when deployed at scale? Difficult/expensive to handle? Something else?

This is a recent paper on MOF production that seems to suggest it's mostly the first thing. Notes a handful of places where industry has successfully achieved scale production, but there are big hurdles to overcome (tricky new processes, expensive feedstocks, etc.) and that tends to limit commercial interest in even tackling it in the first place.

(In a saner world, this might be a place where some big public investments would make sense, which could go a long way to get things over that short-horizon ROI hump and unlock the technology.)

 

[Phenolix]

With a PhD in organometallic chemistry I can only say "Yesss - finally - well deserved!"

 

[thxzetec]

amazing same set of legos for 150 years, with 10,000s of smart people looking for new arrangements, but cool new ideas keep getting found

 

[Snark218]

M0F-303 can capture water vapour from desert air during the night. When the sun heats up the material in the morning, potable water is released.

Serious Fremen shit here.

 

[Rhutanium]

Serious Fremen shit here.

Ninja'd! This is exactly what I was thinking!

 

[jevandezande]

Is it the standard for Nobel prizes to not be awarded in chemistry until a particular discovery has made that move, from lab to industry? That doesn't seem like it should be the case.

I genuinely don't know, and don't know enough to know how to look it up via the intertubes.

The Nobel prize stipulates that it should go to the those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. Given that there hasn't yet been significant benefit to mankind (I'm agnostic on whether they ever will), it seems rather premature. Historically, most discoveries showed significant usage both inside and outside of academia before a Nobel Prize was conferred.

 

[KungFuJoe]

MOFs are really interesting from a chemistry perspective, potentially enabling a lot of things like gas separation and storage or as frameworks to hold catalysts that were originally developed as homogeneous catalysts. However, as a chemist I feel that this Nobel prize may have been premature. There has been very little practical application of MOFs, and I find it telling that this article talks about "potential uses of MOFs" at the end as opposed to actual uses.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are cool. As someone who worked in homogeneous catalysis during my PhD and post-doc, I always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry.

Excuse me sir, could I interest you in some Bucky balls? I hear it's about to leave the lab any day now!

Seriously, my exact thoughts. Amazing and deserved Nobel Prize, and hopefully, one day, a practical application leaves the lab to change our lives for the better. But, even if it doesn't, pushing the envelope of science, our understanding of the world around us, and developing new concepts is the real win. All great inventions are built on the shoulders of the giants who came before us, to paraphrase someone.

 

[jevandezande]

I do not agree. MOFs are a fundamentally new form of sold state matter, which can be engineered in all sorts of ways by chemists, and in a reasonably predictable fashion. A highly novel discovery which is going to lead in all sorts of directions over the next 25 years. And which has huge numbers of practical uses ahead of it.

What do you disagree with? They are interesting and could have potential uses in the future, but have minimal practical usage at the moment. Just because something is cool and has lots of possibilities does not make it a good candidate for a Nobel prize, which is intended for those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. It is not intended as a forward looking award.

 

[terrydactyl]

Yaghi ... now holds a university professor position at the University of California, Berkeley.

A Nobel anecdote I like. When Saul Perlmutter won the 2011 physics prize, he was asked what was the best perk in winning the prize. He replied the the UC system gives laureates a parking permit that allows the to park anywhere on any campus.

 

[EnPeaSea]

Metalheads have long know the bonds built on loud angry music!

 

[orwelldesign]

The Nobel prize stipulates that it should go to the those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. Given that there hasn't yet been significant benefit to mankind (I'm agnostic on whether they ever will), it seems rather premature. Historically, most discoveries showed significant usage both inside and outside of academia before a Nobel Prize was conferred.

Thank you for your reasoned and prompt reply.

I, again, don't really know enough about the subject -- at any level -- to ask, much less answer, something like "here's the previous five years worth of prizes, when they were discovered, and when they reached that threshold." Whatever that threshold is, of course; I'm well aware it's rather subjective, and there's rarely a "so-and-so got robbed of their Academy Award" situation.

If you've got the time, I'd be fascinated to learn more; I'm confined to a smartphone and a Chromebook whilst I'm recuperating from my concussion -- not supposed to go down the stairs for a bit; I'm sure I'd be able to suss it out eventually, but it seems like you've got the background that you probably already know some things I'd be looking at from first principles.

 

[Person_Man]

But Yaghi may be the king of crafting new MOF variants. He started out as a Palestinian refugee in Jordan, made his way to the US in his teens, and began his chemistry education at a community college. After moving on to a four-year college and graduate school, Yaghi has since held professorships at four different universities and now holds the highest level position it's possible to achieve at the University of California, Berkeley.

These are the people the current US administration is turning away. So now they will do their great work for other countries and leave the US in the dust.

 

[TechnicaGratiaArs]

Chemistry is nanotechnology. Still waiting for those heralded nanomachines to revolutionize health, materials, computing and all our other 21st Century engineering. Their early Naughties investment bubble should have delivered plenty of products by now.

Chemistry of materials, not quite machines, has continued to deliver tremendous amounts of innovative products with just the standard amount of industrial investment and hype.

 

[TechnicaGratiaArs]

Kitagawa also had some ideas on where the field might be headed, suggesting that it would ultimately be possible to build MOFs that change their properties in response to external conditions, like temperature or illumination, something that has since been demonstrated.

Is there any work developing MOFs whose structure (and so properties) is tunable by electrical fields or currents? Some MOFs embedded with transistors have produced highly sensitive and selective sensors, so perhaps feeding that feature's signals back into tuning the structure (eg. pore size, catalytic site on/off/gradient, etc) could make highly dynamic and efficient materials.

 

[zaco]

Is there any work developing MOFs whose structure (and so properties) is tunable by electrical fields or currents? Some MOFs embedded with transistors have produced highly sensitive and selective sensors, so perhaps feeding that feature's signals back into tuning the structure (eg. pore size, catalytic site on/off/gradient, etc) could make highly dynamic and efficient materials.

There has been some work on electrodeposition of MOFs, specifically in the battery research field, as protective coatings and ion channels. Though, these still seem to be impractical or expensive to use at large scale. But still cool conceptually.

 

[TechnicaGratiaArs]

There has been some work on electrodeposition of MOFs, specifically in the battery research field, as protective coatings and ion channels. Though, these still seem to be impractical or expensive to use at large scale. But still cool conceptually.

I do see for example research published in January 2025 into lithium MOFs for solid state batteries.

I had in mind more like embedding atoms in the MOF molecule lattice that were sensitive to electrical fields or currents, which does seem to offer benefits to batteries which store/conduct ions.

 

[Dr. Jay]

What do you disagree with? They are interesting and could have potential uses in the future, but have minimal practical usage at the moment. Just because something is cool and has lots of possibilities does not make it a good candidate for a Nobel prize, which is intended for those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. It is not intended as a forward looking award.

Gravitational waves, CRISPR, graphene, exoplanets, dark energy... I am pretty sure the Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to strategically ignore that particular stipulation, and your choices are to either not complain or to be enraged for three consecutive days every autumn.

 

[zaco]

Actually, Prussian Blue is a MOF that gets a lot of practical uses and has been around for ages.

 

[Chuckstar]

Gravitational waves, CRISPR, graphene, exoplanets, dark energy... I am pretty sure the Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to strategically ignore that particular stipulation, and your choices are to either not complain or to be enraged for three consecutive days every autumn.

It was also originally supposed to be for discoveries made within the last year, and that stipulation was abandoned very early in.

EDIT: Probably better to articulate it that that stipulation started being stretched early on, and was utterly abandoned during the second half of the 20th century, especially resulting from a couple big gaffes.

 

[adespoton]

What is the relationship between MOFs and aerogels? They seem structurally very similar, although the approach to creating them differs.

 

[jevandezande]

Gravitational waves, CRISPR, graphene, exoplanets, dark energy... I am pretty sure the Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to strategically ignore that particular stipulation, and your choices are to either not complain or to be enraged for three consecutive days every autumn.

CRISPR is at least actively used in labs for editing genes, thus enabling a lot of research into disease, it just hasn't yet hit it big in actual therapies yet (and will likely be a while because medicine is hard and slow). MOFs mostly just enable more MOF research.

The others listed are physics, which has given up on conferring any sort of direct benefit to mankind (at least benefit beyond that of knowledge, which I think still makes it a worthwhile endeavor, but it is more questionable given the original stipulations).

 

[jevandezande]

Actually, Prussian Blue is a MOF that gets a lot of practical uses and has been around for ages.

Technically, Prussian Blue (Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃) is not a MOF, since cyanide is inorganic.

 

[MagicDot]

The Nobel prize stipulates that it should go to the those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. Given that there hasn't yet been significant benefit to mankind (I'm agnostic on whether they ever will), it seems rather premature.

This! I've been around long enough to have endured a seemingly endless stream of Nobel prize winners whose discoveries go nowhere. We can't be handing out such a prestigious award because what they're working on is "cool". I'm sure applications for this will arise, but I'm highly skeptical it will introduce anything other than stepwise refinement.
The real test will be to see how many YouTube click bait videos are created about how MOF is going to fundamentally transform society and solve the climate crisis. It's the most accurate BS detector we have these days!

 

[quackmeister]

These are the people the current US administration is turning away. So now they will do their great work for other countries and leave the US in the dust.

As Kim Jong Un will attest, better to have total control over an impoverished backwater, than partial control over a wealthy, educated, dynamic society.

 

[Oldmanalex]

What do you disagree with? They are interesting and could have potential uses in the future, but have minimal practical usage at the moment. Just because something is cool and has lots of possibilities does not make it a good candidate for a Nobel prize, which is intended for those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. It is not intended as a forward looking award.

How did the structure of cholesterol provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did the Woodward-Hoffmann rules provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did the detection of the cosmic microwave background provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did observations which confirmed the CNO nucleosynthesis cycle in stars provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? These criteria are often mainly honored in the breach, especially for advances in very fundamental science.

 

[Dedale]

I enjoy reading these news and the kind explanations...


... But i dread Friday. When Trump realizes to his bewilderment he did not actually get the peace Nobel prize and loses what is left of his mind.

 

[penrodyn]

MOFs are really interesting from a chemistry perspective, potentially enabling a lot of things like gas separation and storage or as frameworks to hold catalysts that were originally developed as homogeneous catalysts. However, as a chemist I feel that this Nobel prize may have been premature. There has been very little practical application of MOFs, and I find it telling that this article talks about "potential uses of MOFs" at the end as opposed to actual uses.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are cool. As someone who worked in homogeneous catalysis during my PhD and post-doc, I always felt like these had great promise for scaling up the working I was doing, but I'm also a bit disappointed in the inability of this technology to move from the lab to industry.

I don’t think Nobel prize worthy topics need applications, nice but not necessary. These are science prizes that should reward scientific endeavors. There are plenty of rewards for those who work on applications, most notably money.

 

[penrodyn]

What do you disagree with? They are interesting and could have potential uses in the future, but have minimal practical usage at the moment. Just because something is cool and has lots of possibilities does not make it a good candidate for a Nobel prize, which is intended for those who conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in various fields. It is not intended as a forward looking award.

The search and acquisition of knowledge is of great benefit to mankind.

 

[jevandezande]

How did the structure of cholesterol provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did the Woodward-Hoffmann rules provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did the detection of the cosmic microwave background provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? How did observations which confirmed the CNO nucleosynthesis cycle in stars provide benefit to humanity, at the time the prize was awarded? These criteria are often mainly honored in the breach, especially for advances in very fundamental science.

Konrad Bloch earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism." (Wikipedia), not just for the structure (which was determined by A. Windaus and H. Wieland in 1932). Understanding the fundamental pathways of metabolism and disease in our body is trivially useful in the development of drugs (see the development of statins).
The Woodward–Hoffmann rules unlocked the chemistry of pericyclic reactions (which I think are incredibly beautiful), allowing for numerous syntheses of drugs.

Physics has jumped the shark a long time ago in this regards (I personally find the discoveries interesting, but they have not conferred a tangible benefit on society for a long time unless you count the prizes that aren't really about physics, e.g. Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield in 2024 for ML).

 

[PhaseShifter]

I enjoy reading these news and the kind explanations...


... But i dread Friday. When Trump realizes to his bewilderment he did not actually get the peace Nobel prize and loses what is left of his mind.

Sometimes it seems like a shame the Ig Nobel prizes dropped their original motto. Now they're awarded to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." Originally, they were meant for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced".

Trump would have been a cinch to win several of them this year. Economics and peace for sure, but the one for medicine would have gone to RFK.

(And it also would have been great to have the "Please stop, I'm bored!" warning recorded for everyone to see when Trump started rambling during his acceptance speech.)

 

[TylerH]

So, they discovered a way to make real life Poke balls? Or, for D&D fans, bags of holding?