25 Apr
2011
25 Apr
'11
10:36 a.m.
*Please note tomorrow's seminar is in Grier A conference room: 34-401A
Kindly forward to your groups and post in your area - thanks
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Center for Excitonics
Seminar Series Announcement
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
3:00 PM
Grier A Conference Room: 34-401A*
"Crystalline Microporous Metal-Organic Frameworks: Opportunities in Energy
Research"
Prof. Mircea Dincă, MIT
Abstract
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline solids wherein inorganic
nodes are connected by organic ligands to give rise to highly ordered and
monodisperse micropores with diameters ranging from 0.5 to ~ 2 nanometers.
The micropores are responsible for unprecedented surface areas occasionally
exceeding 5000 m2/g, making MOFs popular choices for energy applications in
H2, CH4, and CO2 storage and capture, among others. The crystalline nature
of these materials, however, also makes them attractive candidates for
studying photophysical phenomena in ordered and/or confined organic
chromophore aggregates. Indeed, conformational and/or structural confinement
of organic dyes inside the walls of MOFs has been shown to drastically
modulate the absorption and emission properties of such molecules. The
various applications of MOFs in energy research, with an emphasis on their
potential utility in controlling dye aggregation, light harvesting, and
other photophysical properties will be discussed.
Bio
Mircea Dincă was born in Romania and obtained his bachelor's degree in
Chemistry from Princeton University in 2003. He did his graduate work at UC
Berkeley on the synthesis and characterization of microporous metal-organic
frameworks for hydrogen storage and catalysis. After a two-year stint as a
postdoctoral associate working on electrochemical water splitting with Prof.
Daniel G. Nocera, he became an assistant professor in the Department of
Chemistry at MIT in 2010. His group's research is concerned with the
synthesis of new microporous materials and their physico-chemical
properties, with a current emphasis on metal-organic frameworks.
Light refreshments provided
The Center for Excitonics is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by
the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and Office of Basic Energy
Sciences