Friday, 15 March 2019
Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi delivers a Manuel Cardona Lecture MOFs design and applications
During his talk, Prof. Eddaoudi detailed various industrial key separations and how his group is dedicated on tackling them, playing with high charge density, fine pore size tuning to modify selectivity, water stability and sorbent regeneration conditions. The lecture was entitled entitled “MOF Design to Applications: Impact of pore system control on gas separations and storage”.
On Wednesday 13 March, ICREA Prof. Daniel Maspoch and Dr. Vincent Guillerm, from the ICN2 Supramolecular Nanochemistry and Materials (NanoUp) Group hosted a Manuel Cardona Lecture by Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi. The Manuel Cardona Lectures series offers the ICN2 community and beyond the opportunity to hear from some of the world's top researchers in nano-related fields. They are named in honour of Prof. Manuel Cardona, a Barcelona-born physicist and one of Spain's most prominent scientists who, from his positions abroad, had a profound impact on many of the research centres in our area.
Prof. Eddaoudi is a Distinguished Professor of Chemical Science, and the Director of the Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He received his master's and doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Paris seven in France and performed a postdoc in Michigan University with Prof. Omar Yaghi (who also gave a Manuel Cardona Lecture in June 2018). He was awarded the prestigious NSF (national Science Foundation) Career Award in 2006. Prof. Eddaoudi is editor for journal of materials chemistry A and is selected from 2014 until now as Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers and world’s most influential scientific minds in 2014.
He is one of the pioneer who understood the great promises of MOFs about 20 years ago and since then he keeps on innovating and leading the field of porous materials. His contributions made him reach the top 100 most cited chemists of the past 10 years.
During his generous talk, Prof. Eddaoudi detailed various industrial key separations (CO2/N2, hydrocarbon isomers etc.) and how his group is dedicated on tackling them, playing with high charge density, fine pore size tuning to modify selectivity, water stability and sorbent regeneration conditions. They developed some of the best methane adsorbent to date, and by “simply” exchange the aluminium cation of this MOF by chromium, they generated one of the best water adsorbent. Such applications are highly targeted by governments and industries worldwide to reach a more sustainable society. In a second part, some MOF rational design strategies have been discussed, ending by de presentation of not just discovered, not yet published novel network topologies based on the net merging principles.
Prof. Eddaoudi took time to address the many questions from the audience before going to Camp Nou for the FC Barcelona match. He’s indeed a real fan and expert since 82 and got rewarded with a solid Blaugrana performance against Lyon (Messi et al. Champ. Leag. 2019, 5-1).