Reimagining Porous Materials for a Sustainable Future

Porous materials shape the world around us: many of the chemicals we use in our daily lives have, at some point, been purified or chemically transformed within subnano- to nano-sized pores. In this talk, I will discuss my group’s efforts to enhance the catalytic activity and physical properties of porous materials to meet rising global challenges in clean energy and sustainability. The first half will focus on the synthesis of electrically conductive metal–organic materials. As sources of renewable electricity become increasingly abundant, new porous architectures that can directly interface with electrical energy are needed. I will detail our efforts to apply structural motifs commonly observed in conjugated carbon nanomaterials to the construction of new 0D, 1D, and 2D conjugated metal–organic nanostructures. The second half of the talk will focus on pushing the frontiers of single-site heterogeneous catalysis design. In enzymes, multiple metal centers and organic functional groups work together to catalyze transformations not achievable by a single component in isolation. My group is applying these bioinspired concepts to the development of new bimetallic and bifunctional heterogeneous catalysts.