I-Corps: MOFTech: Commercialization of Metal-Organic Frameworks

金属有机骨架(MOF)因其在气体处理、气体储存、催化、药物输送和主客体化学等方面的巨大应用潜力，在纳米材料科学中得到了越来越广泛的应用。由于多孔材料的市场价值每年高达30亿美元，各行各业和政府机构都需要新材料，这些材料将为从空气净化到温室气体捕获等各种应用提供根本性的进步。然而，私人或政府部门获得这些新材料的机会很少。该项目团队寻求为定制的MOF材料提供我们新颖的放大流程，以填补这一严重的市场缺口。基于先前的研究结果，该团队开发了以公斤为单位生产MOF材料的技术。目前，MOF主要存在于学术实验室规模，典型的MOF合成产生的产量约为10-100毫克材料。要解决空气净化、二氧化碳捕获、天然气升级等方面的关键问题，需要在多孔材料能力方面取得根本性进展。在实验室规模上，MOF已被证明在这些领域取得了广泛的成功。100克One是项目团队开发的一种特殊材料，其表面积大致相当于26个美式橄榄球场的面积。对于真正的更大规模的适用性，需要容易获得至少大两个数量级的数量，即10-100公斤。由于这些材料的广泛适用性，我们的技术发展具有现实的需求。这个拟议的项目有可能填补目前阻碍MOF在现实世界中应用的关键空白，包括为客户的应用定制材料，以及为客户提供大规模测试的MOF组合。

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained growing popularity in nanomaterials science due to their enormous potential applications in gas treatment, gas storage, catalysis, drug delivery and host-guest chemistry. With a market for porous materials valued at $3 billion annually, a wide range of industries and government agencies have need of new materials that will provide radical advancements for applications ranging from air purification to greenhouse gas capture. However, private or government sectors have minimal access to these new materials. The project team seeks to provide customized MOF materials with our novel scale-up process to fill this serious market gap. Based on the results of prior research, the team has developed technologies to produce MOF materials in kilogram quantities. Currently, MOFs exist largely at the academic lab scale, where the typical MOF synthesis results in yields on the order of 10-100 mg of material. Radical advances in porous materials capabilities are required to solve critical problems in air purification, carbon dioxide capture, natural gas upgrading, etc. MOFs have been shown to provide broad spectrum success in these sectors at the lab scale. 100 grams of one the particular materials developed by the project team possess a surface area that is roughly equivalent to the area of 26 American football fields. For true larger-scale applicability, easy access to quantities of at least two orders of magnitude greater, i.e., 10-100 kg, is required. Due to the broad applicability of these materials, there is a realized need for the development of our technology. This proposed project has the potential to fill critical gaps that currently prevent real-world application of MOFs, including customization of materials for the customer's applications and availability of a portfolio of MOFs for customer testing at scale.