Australian scientists lead breakthrough with major potential for healthcare advancements and supercomputing

AUSTRALIAN scientists have led a breakthrough in chemistry that could yield major advancements in healthcare and super computing.

Australian scientists have made a breakthrough in the use of a tiny porous material that can have major uses.

A TEAM led by Australian scientists from the CSIRO are primed to revolutionise healthcare after making a major breakthrough in chemistry by successfully manipulating the behaviour of tiny designer crystals.

The tiny crystals are known as Metallic Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and are the most porous materials on the planet. In fact, MOFs have so many holes inside that a single teaspoon of the powdery material has the same surface area as a football field.

Led by CSIRO scientist Dr Paolo Falcaro, researchers from Monash University and The University of Adelaide as well as scientists from Japan and Austria were able to overcome a previously prohibitive problem with the erratic structure of the material.

First discovered in 1999, MOFs have been employed in an array of fields including pharmaceutics, electronics and horticulture but have proven difficult to harness to their full potential due to their erratic structure, which makes it difficult to integrate them into functional devices.

However the researchers have been able to control the structure and align the particles in a single direction, opening up major possibilities for the material to be used in the development of vaccines as well as tiny devices that give real-time information about a patient’s condition.

“The possibilities are endless,” said CSIRO scientist Dr Aaron Thornton, who co-authored the paper on the findings.

A close up of the metal organic framework crystals.

“Having the MOFs in alignment means they conduct a current far better, opening up more electrical uses such as implantable medical devices that give real-time information about someone’s health.

“It also gives researchers more control in the development of vaccines, which will fast-track the process,” he said.

The findings also have implications for supercomputing and could revolutionise the way computers work, he told news.com.au.

“We have shown it is possible to grow very thin and precise MOF films. Because MOFs are largely empty space they make good electrical insulators. So good in fact that they could one day replace the silicon-dioxide (glass) material used in your computer’s CPU, allowing the copper wires to be packed more densely and therefore increasing the speed of the computer.”

The paper was published this week in the journal Nature Materials and the research will no doubt be used in numerous projects in the future.

“The fabrication of oriented, crystalline films of metal — organic frameworks (MOFs) is a critical step toward their application to advanced technologies such as optics, microelectronics, microfluidics and sensing,” the journal article said.