Chemical Engineering Seminar

Presented by:

Krista S. Walton

Tim and Sharon Taylor Assistant Professor

Department of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University

Nanostructured Inorganic-Organic Hybrids: Engineering a New Class of Porous Materials

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are inorganic-organic hybrids that represent a new direction in porous materials research. The rich field of coordination chemistry provides a versatile platform from which these materials may be assembled from an almost infinite set of building blocks. Flexible synthesis techniques could lead to the creation of designer-specific multifunctional materials for a variety of applications. One of the major barriers to using MOFs in adsorption applications is that we simply do not know enough about their adsorption properties to choose a proper material (or design a new one) for a desired process. Understanding the adsorption and catalytic properties of MOFs will help narrow down the design scope and facilitate the development of functional materials to perform targeted separations and purifications. In this seminar, I will introduce this new class of materials and discuss our current research in this emerging area.

Adsorption experiments and molecular modeling results will be presented for several gases on model MOFs. Specific discussion will be given regarding the effect of pore size, unsaturated metal sites, and functionalized ligands on the adsorption of light gases. The implications of these results for impacting adsorption applications such as separations, catalysis, and controlled storage and release will be discussed.

Thursday October 16, 2008

11:00 AM, ChE 005

Refreshments served at 10:45 am in the ChE Lobby