SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Scientists from Trinity College Dublin and AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin, have created 'molecular cages' that can maximise the efficiency of converting molecules in chemical reactions, and that may in future also be used as sensors and drug-delivery agents. The cages can be packed with different molecules, many of which have a specific task or functionality.
Incredibly, a teaspoon of powder containing these cages provides a greater internal surface area to boost reactivity and storage capacity than would be provided by an entire football field (4000 m2/g).
This enormous intrinsic surface area relative to the weight of the structure in combination with the solubility offers great promise for energy conversion, while the structure blueprint (hollow, with sub-cages) allows different molecules to be discretely contained within. This latter feature is key in increasing the potential uses for these 'metal-organic-organic polyhedra' (MOP), because it means materials can be packed so as to react only when specific conditions present themselves.
One such example is in bio-sensing and drug-delivery, with a biological cue required to kick-start a chemical reaction. For example, a drug could be encapsulated in one of these MOP in the knowledge that it would only be released at the specific target site, where a specific biological molecule would trigger its release
Source: Trinity College Dublin
Journal Reference: Kevin Byrne, et.al. Ultra-large supramolecular coordination cages composed of endohedral Archimedean and Platonic bodies. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 15268 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15268
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
didnt they used to call these 'buckeyballs' faster Buckmeister Fuller or whatever that chap's name was?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @01:18AM
That would be Buckminster Fuller to you, or Bucky to his friends, https://www.bfi.org/ [bfi.org]
Unrelated to Bucky, but possibly related to this invention? The catalytic converters that clean up car engine exhaust also have huge surface area (acres or hectares), the surface of the porous ceramic element is convoluted at a molecular level. Back to that simple question of fractals -- how long is a coast line?...depends on the length of your ruler.