Metal organic frameworks stiffen up for improved CO2 capture

Roasting metal organic frameworks (MOFs) could make them more effective at capturing CO₂ to remove a key greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, according to recent research by Kumar Varoon Agrawal and co-workers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Reporting in Advanced Materials, they show that heating a membrane of zeolitic imidazolate framework 8 (ZIF-8) to an optimum temperature of about 360°C for about 3 to 5 seconds – what they describe as rapid heat treatment (RHT) – could lead to more selective CO₂ capture.