Imagine a football field. In the background you’ll seem short. Now, try to imagine that this enormous size of a flat football field to fit on a smaller area. What is the minimum size will be able to achieve? You will be surprised, but with the new material, created by a group of chemists from the University of Dresden, an area equal to the size of a football field, fit just 1 gram of a new substance.
For starters, let’s examine how this is possible. Actually, it’s pretty simple. Take a sponge for washing dishes and a wooden block of the same size. If we compare the surface area of each object — it turns out that due to the curves and cavities of a sponge, its total area will be many times greater than the area of a smooth bar. The material porosity increases the surface area and this unique material was created by a group of scientists.
The new substance was named DUT-60 and it is in a class of metal-organic frame structures, which consist of metal ions linked together by organic molecules. 1 gram DUT-60 has an internal surface area of 7800 square meters. The creation of the material, the experts took about 5 years and the main problem was the stabilization of the structure, as, generally, such substances can only exist in solution, but in the air their time “stick together” and the area is much reduced.
Well, the most important question: what does it do? There is also no difficulty. Metal-organic porous materials are used mainly as catalysts, accelerating chemical reactions, because in some cases the rate of reaction depends on the area of contact and the higher it is, the faster the reaction. Also, the material can act as a separator of mixtures of substances. For example, in one part of the DUT-60 can be placed hydrophobic molecules and they will “push” the water, displacing it from the aqueous solution of any compound.
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Created material, 1 gram of which “fit the field”
Vladimir Kuznetsov