First fundamentally new form of adsorption for more than 90 years driven by molecular machines
Unlike physisorption and chemisorption, the newly discovered ‘mechanisorption’ is an active process that can store energy or chemicals
Grafting arrays of molecular pumps onto metal–organic framework (MOF) surfaces has allowed scientists to devise a completely new form of adsorption that they’ve called ‘mechanisorption’. ‘It’s a new phenomenon by which molecules are actively transported to a surface compartment and retained in a non-equilibrium steady state before being released to the bulk in a non-destructive way,’ explains Liang Feng from Northwestern University in the US, who was part of a research team working with Nobel laureate Fraser Stoddart. The process is similar to active transport in biological systems, Feng says.