Date & Time: Mar 6 2026 | 2:55 - 3:50pm Location: iSTEM Building 2, Room 1218 In this talk I will introduce vapor-assisted synthesis as a versatile technique to deposit metal-organic framework (MOF) thin films on solid substrates. Despite the large number of publications in the MOF community, only a small fraction of these publications focus on thin film synthesis. For certain applications, such as chemical sensors, thin films are necessary to reduce the response time and increase the analytical sensitivity of a transducer. In general, the selectivity of a MOF to adsorb one molecule over another results from pore size, pore geometry and the functional groups inside the pores. The talk is organized in two parts. In the first part, two different rigid (i.e. lattice constants fixed) MOF topologies were studied to measure the adsorption kinetics and thermodynamics of volatile aromatic compounds. The role of missing linker defects was found to play a critical role in adsorption capacity. In the second part, a series of adsorption/desorption isotherms were measured for a class of pillared MOF thin films exposed to volatile polar compounds. The shape of the adsorption/desorption isotherms reveals a selective “breathing” phenomenon (i.e. lattice constants change) for certain divalent metal ion/organic ligand combinations. Finally, we demonstrate that dielectric measurements can be used to measure the concentration of polar molecules in the MOF host. Type of Event: Physical Seminar Research Areas: Physical Chemistry Prof. Greg Szulczewski Department: Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Alabama Learn more about Prof. Szulczewski and his work https://chemistry.ua.edu/people/gregory-j-szulczewski/
