RECHARGING THE FUTURE: METAL ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS AS ELECTRODES IN LITHIUM ION BATTERIES

Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a highly porous class of coordination crystal compounds that have only been methodically and extensively studied for the past 15 years. They are made of inorganic clusters connected by organic linker molecules. Substituting in different clusters and linker molecules leads to an almost infinite level of variety, making MOFs versatile and highly exciting for research. Much of MOF research has been geared towards storage of CO\(_{2}\), CH4, and a host of other gases that are economical and/or sensitive to the climate. Much less has been done about looking into another area that could take advantage of the porosity of MOFs: battery electrodes. Batteries that are able to store more ions typically have greater energy and power capacity, making MOFs a potentially very valuable untapped resource in the area of electrodes. We present a screening of numerous MOFs from the MOF-2 and IRMOF series in the metric of lithium ion battery capacity, and we are pleased to report MOF-508 (Zn-MOF-2 with 4,4’-bypyridine attaching the nets) with exceptional capacity – 1800 mAh/g – in certain test circumstances, an insight that will certainly have to be looked into more in the near future.