carbonising MOFs tagged posts

When the MOF is carbonised it transforms into a nano-diatom, much like a dragon egg turns into a fire-born dragon after fire treatment in Game of Thrones. Credit: Jingwei Hou

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries. They found that adding salt to the inside of a supermolecular sponge and then baking it at a high temperature transformed the sponge into a carbon-based structure. Surprisingly, the salt reacted with the sponge in special ways and turned it from a homogeneous mass to an intricate structure with fibres, struts, pillars and webs...