Joshua Jortner Distinguished Lectures in Chemistry
Prof. Omar M. Yaghi, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, United States
Title:
SEQUENCE DEPENDENT MATERIALS: A CARBON NEUTRAL CYCLE AND HARVESTING WATER FROM AIR
Abstract:
Reducing society’s reliance on fossil fuels presents one of the most pressing energy and environmental challenges facing our planet. Hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide, which are some of the smallest and simplest molecules known, lie at the center of solving this problem through realization of a carbon-neutral energy cycle. Potentially, this could be achieved through the deployment of hydrogen as the fuel of the long term, methane as a transitional fuel, and carbon dioxide capture and sequestration as the urgent response to ongoing climate change. This presentation will detail strategies and technologies developed to overcome the difficulties encountered in the capture, storage, delivery and conversion of these gas molecules. In particular, I will focus on metal–organic frameworks in which metal oxide ‘hubs’ are linked with organic ‘struts’ to make materials of ultrahigh porosity, which provide a basis for addressing these challenges through materials design on the molecular level. Furthermore, designing the interior of these frameworks leads to materials capable of harvesting water from air and the potential of solving another great problem concerning access to clean/fresh water.
