Materials · 1999

Metal-organic frameworks

Crystalline sponges with vast internal surface area.

Omar Yaghi's MOF-5 in 1999 showed a stable porous framework with about 2,900 square meters of surface per gram. MOFs capture gases and water, and earned the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Synthetic plastic (Bakelite) 1907
X-rays 1895

What it led to 1

Gigatonne-scale carbon removal ~2045