ACS AMA: Hi Reddit! My name is Mircea Dincă, a professor of chemistry at
MIT. Ask me anything about metal-organic framework materials!
Abstract
ACS AMA I am Mircea Dincă, and I am an Associate Professor of Chemistry
at MIT, leading a lab focused on the design and synthesis of new
materials for energy and environmental applications. In particular, we
are interested in developing a class of materials called metal-organic
frameworks, which are very porous. Most recently, we have shown that
these “super-sponges” can adsorb record amounts of water, and that one
can use this high water uptake to “suck” moisture from the atmosphere
and deliver fresh water in water-stressed dry areas of low natural
humidity. This work was recently published in ACS Central Science under
the title “Record Atmospheric Fresh Water Capture and Heat Transfer
with a Material Operating at the Water Uptake Reversibility Limit” and
is available free of charge for readers at:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00186 This paper is
just one example of many ways in which we use metal-organic frameworks
for renewable energy applications, including record-setting
supercapacitors and smart windows, or for heterogeneous catalysis of
importance for large industrial processes such as ethylene dimerization,
used in polyethylene production. For an overview of the many exciting
opportunities offered by metal-organic frameworks as an up-and-coming
class of advanced materials, check out our accessible Outlook on this
field, also published recently in ACS Central Science “Grand Challenges
and Future Opportunities for Metal–Organic Frameworks”
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00197 By way of
background, I was born in Romania, and moved to the US for my
undergraduate degree, which I obtained at Princeton University in 2003.
I completed my graduate work at UC Berkeley and graduated with a PhD in
Inorganic Chemistry in 2008. Following 2 years as a Postdoctoral Scholar
at MIT, I started my independent research group at MIT in 2010, where I
have been an Associate Professor since 2015. For my group’s research I
have been awarded a Sloan Fellowship, a Cottrell Award, and a Dreyfus
Teacher-Scholar Award. In 2016, I was selected for NSF’s Alan T.
Waterman Award. Ask me anything about our work on metal-organic
frameworks and its relationship to modern energy or environmental
research! I will be back at 1pm EDT (11am PDT, 5pm UTC) to answer your
questions. MD logged in, June 20, 12:58pm, EST. Thank you for your
questions reddit! MD out June 20, 2:03pm, EST.