EIRES Lecture: from electrically conductive MOFs to sustainable batteries

You are cordially invited to participate in this 62nd EIRES lecture. You can participate online. Start time: 12h

Introduction

The emergence of electrically conductive metal-organic frameworks (c-MOFs) is one of the most paradoxical developments in the field in recent years. For how can you transport charges through a material consisting largely of ‘empty’ space? In this respect, MOFs, made of layers of organic ligands connected by (mostly) square-planar metal ions, have shown particularly good electrical conductivity. However, the exact mechanism for charge transport is still under debate, with several experimental and computational reports describing these materials as metals, semiconductors or semi-metals.

This talk describes our group's latest efforts to understand the intrinsic properties of 2D c-MOFs, especially with respect to single-crystal electrical measurement studies, and in particular discusses the unexpectedly large influence of off-plane transport. Time permitting, I will discuss unexpected results arising from the behaviour of these materials as 1D metals, and applications of related organic materials in fast-charging lithium-ion batteries and high-energy density supercapacitors.

About the speaker

Mircea Dincă, born in Făgăraş, Romania, received his BA in chemistry from Princeton University (2003) and PhD in inorganic chemistry from UC Berkeley (2008). After postdoctoral work at MIT, he joined MIT's Faculty of Chemistry in 2010. His research focuses on microporous and low-dimensional solids for energy and environmental applications. Dincă has been consistently named among the world's most cited chemists since 2014 and has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Alan T. Waterman Award (2016), ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (2018) and Blavatnik National Award in Chemistry (2021).