[Topology.beta] Nobel Prize for MOFs

[Barthel, S.D. (Senja)]

Dear Topologists,

I am sending you some happy spam:

Does anyone remember the materials I introduced in a CTA^2 talk on crystallographic nets? Yaghi's 'yellow sphere' indicating the large pores of his famous material with the name MOF5? Now it’s even more famous: This year’s chemistry Nobel prize is awarded for the ‘discovery' of exactly these metal-organic frameworks! The materials that got me into chemistry because they can have interesting non-trivial topological realizations, including interpenetrations, linking, and that Riya is (very theoretically) braiding!

Their topological diversity is surely less known than their potential applications though: Metal-organic frameworks are currently much studied for gas storage, adsorption, and separation. Think of methane/hydrogen storage, carbon capture, flue gas separation. Properties that Hannah is helping machine learning models to predict. Whether metal-organic frameworks are going to help save the world or not, I'd say it’s a good day for applied topology!

Best,
Senja
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