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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are emerging multi-functional materials that are gradually finding their way out of the research labs and into a myriad of real-world applications. For example, MOFs can store dangerous gasses, catalyze chemical reactions, deliver drugs in controlled fashion, and may even be used in rechargeable batteries and solar cells.

A team of researchers from Clemson University's College of Science recently demonstrated that a novel double-helical MOF architecture, in a partially oxidized form, can conduct electricity that potentially makes it a next-generation semiconductor.

The team's findings are described in the paper titled "The Advent of Electrically Conducting Double-Helical Metal-Organic Frameworks Featuring Butterfly-Shaped Electron-Rich π-Extended Tetrathiafulvalene Ligands," which was published on March 18, 2020, as the cover article in Applied Materials & Interfaces, a journal published by the American Chemical Society.

[...] Electrically conducting MOFs may have some advantages over conventional inorganic semiconductors made from silicon, gallium, or arsenide, which are ubiquitous in logic gates, memory chips, and other electronics applications. For example, conventional semiconductors are synthesized at temperatures between 500 and 1,000 degrees Celsius.

"On the other hand, MOFs can be made in a more energy efficient way than inorganic semiconductors," Saha said. "They can be synthesized anywhere between room temperature and 150 degrees Celsius, while maintaining the highly ordered crystalline structure that conventional semiconductors have."

Saha and his team plan to continue to develop new MOF architectures with different geometries, compositions, and functions that can have applications in future electronics and energy conversion and storage devices.

Monica A. Gordillo, Paola A. Benavides, Dillip K. Panda, Sourav Saha. The Advent of Electrically Conducting Double-Helical Metal–Organic Frameworks Featuring Butterfly-Shaped Electron-Rich π-Extended Tetrathiafulvalene Ligands. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2020; 12 (11): 12955 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b20234

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