Publication date: 15th May 2025
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), zeolites, and other high-surface-area materials become even more useful when prepared as colloidal nanoparticles. They can be processed into coatings, membranes, and thin films via solution-state methods, such as spray coating or 3-D printing, at industrial scales. Nanosizing porous materials also improves their bioavailability for drug delivery, while enhancing the kinetics of gas sorption in carbon capture, water harvesting, and chemical separations technologies. Fundamentally, the presence of both external and internal surfaces challenges basic notions of interfacial science. I will describe advances from the Brozek lab towards the synthesis of monodisperse MOF nanocrystals and analytical techniques to understand their internal and external surface chemistry. Aided by sum-frequency generation spectroscopy, electrochemical measurements, and synthetic molecular approaches, we observe unexpected size-dependent optical properties, redox processes driven by cooperative supramolecular interactions, and tunable phase change behavior.