Omar M. Yaghi has been awarded the 2006 Herbert Newby McCoy Award
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The McCoy Award for the Greatest Discovery in Chemistry 2006 has been awarded to Omar Yaghi for the development of new microporous Metal-Organic Framework materials (MOFs) that exhibit exceptional uptake of hydrogen gas.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) were invented by the McCoy Award winner in the early 90s. MOFs have crystal structures that resembles a scaffold made of linked rods- a solid-state structure that gives them a multitude of nanoscale pores and a correspondingly vast internal surface area where gas molecules can accumulate. A pinch of a MOF has roughly the surface area of a football field. An analysis of seven new MOFs, reported in a communication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society earlier this year, revealed two of them that exhibit a combination of substantial H2 uptake and moderate densities. These approach the 2010 DOE target of 45 g of H2/L volume, demonstrating that the volumetric capacity of MOFs is feasible as a storage medium for stationary and mobile fueling applications. 45g is 22.5 moles and would occupy more than 500 liters!
The Herbert Newby McCoy Award was established in 1964 by Mrs. Ethel Terry McCoy in honor of her husband. He wrote Introduction to General Chemistry (1919) with his wife-to-be, Ethel Terry, and contributed to numerous papers on physical chemistry, radioactivity and rare earths. To support her husband's life-long interest in science, Mrs. McCoy designated that this annual award be made to a student or faculty member in the chemistry department making the greatest contribution of the year to science.
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