Reticular Chemistry Leading to Carbon Capture and Water Harvesting from Air
Omar Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He received a BS in chemistry from SUNY Albany (1985) and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Illinois-Urbana (1990). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1990-92) and has held professorial positions in chemistry at Arizona State University (1992-97), the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (1998-2005), and UCLA (2006-11). Professor Yaghi has received numerous awards including the Materials Research Society Medal (2007), the American Chemical Society Award in Chemistry of Materials (2009), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (2015), the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2017), the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (2018), the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018), the Eni Award for Excellence in Energy (2018), and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Aminoff Prize (2019). Professor Yaghi was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Abstract: Since the first report of metal-organic frameworks in the mid-1990s and covalent organic frameworks in 2005, the chemistry of these frameworks has rapidly developed to become one of the fastest growing field of chemistry. It is reticular chemistry, which is defined as linking of molecular building blocks by strong bonds into crystalline extended structures. In this lecture the challenges and solutions to making crystalline, truly porous frameworks, and the “grammar” of linking organic and inorganic building blocks by strong bonds into MOFs will be described. The flexibility with which these structures can be varied and modified has led to a plethora of structures and applications especially in catalysis, carbon capture, and water harvesting from desert air. The lecture will conclude by showing how multivariate structures of MOFs may very well lead to sequence-dependent materials properties.
This Provost’s Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Chemistry, will be held on Friday, October 18, at 3:30 pm, in the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics Auditorium.
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