On Friday, Prof. Daniel Maspoch invited Prof. Christopher Richardson at ICN2 for a seminar about his research.

Pro. Richardson is working as a professor at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health, University of Wollongong, in Australia and we had the pleasure to host him at ICN2 for a seminar.

Research in his group is focused on the newest type of fully synthetic nanoporous solid known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The control over porosity and chemical functionality sets these solids above traditional adsorbents yet improving upon current knowledge and understanding is necessary to see MOFs make the transition into practical use.
The ability to functionalise MOFs after their formation is a decided advantage for tuning the properties and thereby enhancing the performance of these materials. This process, known as post-synthetic modification (PSM), has become very important to the field over the past 10 years. Our aim in this area has been to establish thermal methods of PSM and demonstrate the benefits of this approach. In this talk he presented results from his group’s work, which have centered on the use of porous functionalized IRMOF-9 analogues, and discuss what we see as benefits along with our future direction in this area.

Overall a very intuitive and inspiring talk, bringing attention to details that are often neglected.

Thank you Chris for your visit!