Researchers have found naturally occurring metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) — chemical structures that were thought to exist only when made in the lab.
MOFs have open, porous architectures, which could make them useful in catalysis, photovoltaics and other applications. Tomislav Friščić at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Sergey Krivovichev at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia and their colleagues used X-ray diffraction to study two samples from a permafrost drill core, which was taken from a Siberian coal mine 230 metres below Earth's surface more than 70 years ago. They observed that the rare organic minerals stepanovite and zhemchuzhnikovite contain channels, pores and other structures that are found in synthetic MOFs.
These are the only organic minerals known so far to have open architectures, the authors say.
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Minerals mimic synthetic structure. Nature 536, 128 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/536128b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/536128b
