Challenges and solutions to the scale-up of porous materials

Abstract

With increasing pace, crystalline open frameworks are moving to larger scale, mature applications that stretch as broadly as catalysis, separation, water purification, adsorption, sensing, biomineralization and energy storage. A particular challenge in this development can be the unexpected variation in material properties from batch to batch, even when a cursory analysis would indicate that no process changes occurred. Our team has lived this journey in many larger projects where pilot scale production of metal-organic frameworks for use in devices has been a key milestone and suffered the difficulties of unexpected performance departures. In this Perspective, we aim to share some of the learning outcomes in the hope that it will further speed development in the field. A major challenge in materials scale-up is the variation in properties between batches. Here, the difficulties in the pilot-scale production of metal-organic frameworks are discussed and suggestions are provided to help improve large-scale synthesis development.