Carlos Martí-Gastaldo, group leader at the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia, has been awarded a prestigious Consolidator Grant of 2 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for the development of his project LIVINGPORE. The project aims to develop innovative strategies to "program" the chemistry and the structural response of porous MOF-type materials.
Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are a huge family of porous, crystalline solids. These hybrid organic-inorganic architectures can display unlimited chemical compositions, structures, and sizeable porosities. The use of geometrical design concepts has been central to the development of MOF chemistry, the rapid growth of the field, and its increasing importance in modern catalysis, storage and separation technologies. In fact, Martí-Gastaldo and part of his research team have promoted, together with the University of Valencia, the startup Porous Materials in Action (PMA), dedicated to the development and commercialization of MOF products, processes, and services for their application in sectors such as the storage of useful gases as green fuels, catalysis, pollutant capture, water supply and purification or environmental purification.
Martí-Gastaldo already obtained another 1.5 million in ERC funding in 2016 for a first project related to MOFs. His ERC Starting Grant (Chem-fs-MOF), which will finalize by the end of 2022, has allowed his team to propose solutions for overcoming the stability problems that limited the application of this class of materials. With LIVINGPORE, he now proposes a change in the current perception of MOFs to perceive them as unique porous materials, capable of structural and functional responses closer to biological systems that might enable applications currently unthinkable of in separation or biocatalysis.
According to Martí Gastaldo, it would be a conceptual leap to stop thinking of porous materials as "passive" or "rigid" systems when encapsulating hosts and start thinking of them as "programmable and flexible" entities. Systems capable of adapting to or feeling the molecules that are housed inside them to separate or even transform them at convenience". "For example, if we manage not only to encapsulate and stabilize proteins, but to gain control over their conformation and function simply by housing them in pores with specific chemistries, we might be opening the door to unprecedented opportunities", says the researcher from the University of Valencia.
Martí-Gastaldo began his independent career in Liverpool, with the award of a University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society and returned to the ICMol in 2014 with a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship to lead the design of highly stable MOFs, one of the strategic research lines of the ‘María de Maeztu’ Excellence program awarded to the center.
He is is currently one of the guarantor investigators of the second ‘María de Maeztu’ Excellence program of ICMol, and coordinates the implementation of a new research line for the Molecular Design of Biomaterials. In the last 5 years, Martí-Gastaldo has established and consolidated a new research group at the ICMol. Research at the Functional Inorganic Materials team (www.icmol.es/funimat) encompasses different targets ranging from the synthesis, characterization and processing of inorganic, porous materials. Built upon a thorough understanding of these basic principles, the group also explores the application of these synthetic systems in biological and environmental-related applications.
