Periodic Reporting for period 3 - COMPLEXORDER (The Complexity Revolution: Exploiting Unconventional Order in Next-Generation Materials Design)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-10-01 al 2023-03-31
1. Prussian blue analogues. These are materials used in high-capacity batteries and as catalysts to make high-value organics. We have shown how the complexity of these materials might be controlled rationally to optimise their physical properties.
2. Metal–organic frameworks. These are porous materials that can be used either to store gases reversibly (e.g. CO2) or as sensors for different molecules. We have been working on ways of exploiting complexity to engineer new types of mechanical flexibility in metal–organic frameworks that allow them to sense molecules in very specific ways and even to store information.
3. Structural analogues of exotic electronic phases. Spin-ices are magnetic materials with a very unusual physics exploitable in `spintronic' materials. Their key limitation is the extremely low temperatures at which they operate (usually a few Kelvin – the temperature of outer space). We have been working on developing analogues of these materials that operate at room temperature. The secret has been to find structural analogues of electronic states.