Teaspoon of wonder material equivalent to rugby playing area

Picture a teaspoon holding the entire surface area of a rugby field.

That’s the incredible amount of complexity packed within a cuttingedge compound that scientists say could make a big difference in efforts to combat climate change.

Metal-organic compounds, or MOFs, are the focus of a summit drawing world experts to the country conference in Auckland this week.

These materials could accommodate hydrogen in next-generation fuel tanks or suck drinking water from desert-like atmospheres.

But it is their potential to trap CO2 which has scientists most excited

“MOFs are already being used for carbon dioxide capture from power plants and we’re now looking to use them to sieve out the CO2 that is already present in the atmosphere,” said Telfer, also a principal investigator with New Zealand’s MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.

“While these materials don’t break down the CO2, they prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. Therefore, they can mitigate climate change.”

Telfer noted the UN’s recent major climate report, which found governments would have to nearly halve greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the next decade to keep the global temperature rise within 1.5C.

“The capture of CO2 from air is implicit in all climate change targets. But we don’t yet have a feasible technology to do this.”

One discovery sure to receive attention is the ability of MOFs to suck drinking water out of dry air.

Local researchers will be among those to give talks.