June 5, 2017 – A “lucky finding” by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists has led to a simple, nontoxic method to synthesize inexpensive ordered mesoporous materials from plant products. These materials will allow larger molecules to transfer more easily during catalysis, separations and other energy-related applications, said ORNL’s Pengfei Zhang, whose team was originally evaluating tannin, a biomolecule found in plants, for other studies. As they mixed tannin with metallic salt cross-linkers, without applying heat or solvents, the molecules surprisingly self-assembled into hexagonal cylinder-shaped mesostructures with large, uniform pore size. The solid-state process took only one hour as opposed to days when using traditional solution methods. Results of the synthesis process are detailed in Nature Communications.
