Synthetic Materials Set New World Record For Greatest Amount of Surface Area

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Synthetic Materials Set New World Record For Greatest Amount of Surface Area

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @03:09PM from the narrowly-beating-out-your-mamma dept.

Zothecula writes "Researchers at Northwestern University, Illinois, have broken a world record in the creation of two synthetic materials, named NU-109 and NU-110, which have the greatest amount of surface areas of any material to date (abstract). To put this into perspective: if one were able to take a crystal of NU-110 the size of a grain of salt, and somehow unfold it, the surface area would cover a desktop. Additionally, the internal surface area of just one gram of the new material would cover one-and-a-half football fields."

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SI units, please by Lumpio- · 2012-09-11 15:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

Could we have the equivalent of "a desktop" and "one-and-a-half football fields" in a more scientific unit? I'm not American enough to remember how big a "football field" is.
1. Re:SI units, please by cheater512 · 2012-09-11 15:25 · Score: 2
  
  From TFA it seems to be 7,000 m2/g.
2. Re:SI units, please by binarylarry · 2012-09-11 15:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  How many magic bags of holding is it comparable to?
  
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3. Re:SI units, please by TapeCutter · 2012-09-11 16:22 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's the old woman who gave birth to your "mom".
  
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4. Re:SI units, please by mwvdlee · 2012-09-11 20:44 · Score: 2
  
  Heineken?? Fuck that shit!
  Taking into account the inner metric diameter of the neck of a Heineken bottle, I regret to inform you that your request cannot be granted due to mechanical incompatibilities.
  
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5. Re:SI units, please by Arancaytar · 2012-09-11 23:06 · Score: 2
  
  I'd roughly estimate a football field to be between 0.1 and 0.2 Libraries of Congress.
And to put this in perspective further... by Jiro · 2012-09-11 15:25 · Score: 2

What was the previous record? This is a lousy article, since it gives us no reason to think that this is really a breakthrough. From the description it sounds like an aerogel.
What are the implications? by joelwhitehouse · 2012-09-11 15:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

The article says the synthetic material is porous. Can this material be used as a water filter? If the material forms a cage like structure, can it be used in medicine to trap a virus or bacterium before infection occurs? What can you do with such a material?
1. Re:What are the implications? by jo_ham · 2012-09-11 15:48 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Catalysis, gas storage, filtering, scaffolds for molecular construction etc.
  Extremely high surface area materials are already extensively used in chemistry for this sort of thing.
2. Re:What are the implications? by SydShamino · 2012-09-11 16:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Depending on its electrical properties it could be a component of an ultracapacitor.
  
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3. Re:What are the implications? by Jade_Wayfarer · 2012-09-11 20:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I thought Mexicans were unquestionable leaders in this field?
  
  (Hey, I have nothing against Mexicans or even light drugs like the weed, really.)
  
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  Absence of proof != proof of absence.
4. Re:What are the implications? by chriswilmer · 2012-09-12 02:14 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, too small! The smallest virus that I am aware of has a diameter of 20 nanometers. The pores of MOFs are typically only a few nanometers (which is huge when it comes to trapping gas molecules). However, some day we may be able to design MOFs with much larger pores, which will be really cool for biological applications.
Capacitor by pcjunky · 2012-09-11 15:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

I wonder how large a capacitor density could e made with this stuff?
1. Re:Capacitor by inode_buddha · 2012-09-11 16:35 · Score: 2
  
  Ahh hell, that's *exactly* the first thing I was thinking... I remember when aerogel came out...
  
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It's bigger... by zawarski · 2012-09-11 15:46 · Score: 2, Funny

...on the inside!
1. Re:It's bigger... by boarder8925 · 2012-09-11 15:57 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Time and Relative Dimension in Salt
  
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  Keep your eyes to the sky.
A video about MOFs by chriswilmer · 2012-09-11 16:15 · Score: 3, Informative

For those of you who are curious to know more about our MOF research at Northwestern University: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaKSekjAnqY
Is it sticky? by Another,+completely · 2012-09-11 20:55 · Score: 2

Does this do the van der Waals force trick that Gecko feet do, or does it need to be more flexible for that?
1. Re:Is it sticky? by SleazyRidr · 2012-09-12 00:50 · Score: 2
  
  The surface area is mostly holes running through each 'grain' of this stuff, so you can't put it up against another surface to do that trick.
  
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Re:Yeah!!! by chriswilmer · 2012-09-12 02:18 · Score: 2

Actually, very high surface area materials already have a lot of important industrial uses. Your at-home water filters, for example, are function entirely on the basis of having a larger surface area to weight ratio. So, materials like these have immediate uses as water filters (and many many other things, such as storing natural gas in cars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaKSekjAnqY).