Argonne scientist Karena Chapman examines the diamond anvil pressure cell at the Advanced Photon Source.

Argonne National Laboratory scientist are putting pressure on metal-organic frameworks (MOF), they act like molecular-scale sponges.These MOF's have wide ranging potential uses for filtering, capturing or detecting molecules such as carbon dioxide or hydrogen storage for fuel cells. Since the MOF's do not fill space efficiently, the structures are particularly sensitive to even relatively moderate applied pressures. For any carbon or hydrogen gas storage application, the MOF materials which generally form as fine particles or small crystals will need to be compressed into pellets to optimize their volume capacity. Using a diamond anvil cell at the lab's Advanced Photon Source synthesized a copper-benzenetricarboxylate MOF and subjected its framework to various pressure with and without pressure-transmitting fluids.