Revolutionary discovery hailed
A NEW family of materials which ‘present revolutionary opportunities for the chemical industry, renewables and reducing pollutants’ has been developed at Alicante university (UA) molecular nanotechnology laboratory (Nanomol).
The discovery, published in the prestigious scientific magazine Nature Communications, ‘opens up infinite possibilities for sectors such as energy or pharmaceuticals’, a UA spokesman assures.
The scientists were working with zeolites, the family of catalysts that is most important and most used in the chemical industry, which are very ordered materials made of units that are repeated periodically.
“We noticed that imperfect and disordered materials have innumerable opportunities to manufacture new materials with unique properties,” revealed the researcher and author, Noemí Linares.
UA professor of inorganic chemistry and Nanomol director, Javier García Martínez, added: “Defective and disordered things do not have the limits that regular structures often impose, which opens endless possibilities for creating and designing materials.”
The researchers created hybrid zeolites that are halfway between ordered and disorsignificant
dered structures, which have advantages such as an elevated surface area which enables them to transform very voluminous molecules, which was not possible with conventional zeolites as they have very narrow pores.
Co-author Mónica J. Mendoza Castro said they have irregular but very large cavities which enable larger and more complex molecules to be transformed.
These materials were created by a process comparable to pausing the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly before it is completed, and finding in this stage something completely new, fascinating and with innumerable applications, explained the professor.
This discovery represents ‘a revolution in the field of catalysts which is key to making the chemical industry more sustainable’, the UA claims, noting it has already patented the technology. This work also involved researchers from Manchester University and was co-financed by the EU and the Spanish government.