'Easily Improving the "Carbon Dioxide-Capturing Metal"'

[Asia Economy Reporter Junho Hwang] Domestic researchers have developed a technology that enhances the applicability of metal-organic frameworks, which are attracting attention as next-generation materials in fields such as air purification, energy storage, and drug delivery.

Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology announced on the 27th that a research team led by Professor Jinhee Park, specializing in New Materials Science, developed a new dual modification technology that introduces various functional groups into metal-organic frameworks while simultaneously improving the properties of the frameworks, which was introduced in the international academic journal Angewandte Chemie.

The process of introducing functional groups and pores using dual modification technology, along with scanning electron microscope images and a schematic diagram of iodine adsorption experiments according to pore size.

The metal-organic frameworks whose applicability was enhanced by the research team have a porous structure with multiple holes like a honeycomb. Although more than 80,000 different structures of metal-organic frameworks have been discovered, the modification process is complicated, and it is difficult to analyze the structure after modification, making industrial application challenging.

The research team developed a method to directly introduce desired functional groups during the process of substituting hydrogen-carbon bonds inside the framework with carbon-carbon bonds. The team stated that this technology can increase the stability of the framework compared to existing technologies and makes structural analysis easier. They also confirmed that mesopores sized 2nm to 50nm were generated inside the frameworks made using this method. These frameworks exhibited iodine adsorption speeds approximately 3 to 6 times faster than existing ones and showed excellent performance in adsorbing carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Professor Jinhee Park, Department of New Materials Science, DGIST (right), Byeongchan Lee, integrated master's and doctoral course student (left)

Professor Jinhee Park said, "Existing modification technologies had complicated processes for introducing functional groups and were difficult to analyze. The technology developed this time overcomes these issues and further allows easy modification of the material's properties and structure. We plan to conduct additional research to contribute to the practical application of metal-organic frameworks."

Based on these research results, the team will conduct further studies on similar inorganic-organic materials. Through this, they plan to enable the use of metal-organic frameworks in various industrial fields such as air purification technology, energy storage, sensors, and drug delivery.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.