Ideas
Materials made to order
The argument that runs through the work: specify the job, then build the structure that does it. Statements are quoted as published, with their sources.
The argument in four steps
Start from the job
A made-to-order material begins with what it must do: which molecules to hold, which to let pass, under what conditions. KAUST describes his group’s goal as made-to-order MOFs, and he has said it is crucial to be able to produce them for industrial applications.
Choose building blocks whose geometry leads to the structure
TWAS credits him with design strategies (supermolecular building blocks and layers, net-coded building units and merged nets) that enable the rational construction of programmable porous materials with encoded structure and function. See the 2024 merged-nets paper.
Make the pore the right size, not the biggest
His group has worked with contracted pores, so that an opening can tell two near-identical molecules apart: the size that does the job, not the biggest. See propylene and propane.
Then make it work at scale
A selective crystal is not a process. Stability, lifetime, cost and forming the material into films and membranes decide whether it matters. See the 2026 Nature membrane paper.
In the record
- 2014
“It is crucial to be able to produce made-to-order materials for industrially relevant applications.”
KAUST Discovery: Blueprint guides the shape of things to come
- 2015
Separation and purification of industrial commodities, he said, “currently represent around 15 percent of global energy production,” with demand projected to triple by 2050.
- 2015
On contracted pores: “Our methods can generate exceptionally stable MOFs with contracted pore sizes that have been shown to achieve efficient separation of several gas mixtures.” MOFs, he said, are “the most promising candidate materials” for building in functionality by design.
KAUST Discovery: MOFs with smaller pores better select gases
- 2016
Controlling the distance between fluorine atoms made “the ideal square-shaped pockets” for trapping carbon dioxide. He added that the group was working to scale the material up and seek industry collaboration.
- 2016
On methane storage, the needs he named were higher capacity and cyclability, stability in water, and scaling up to commercially useful quantities.
- 2026
“The challenge has never been discovering materials capable of performing these separations, but finding ways to manufacture them at the scale industry requires.”
Quotations are taken from the linked articles. Mohamed’s own essays and dated predictions will be published here when he writes them.
Open problems
- How do we design for a separation, rather than for a structure alone?
- How can the molecular selectivity of a crystal be carried into a membrane that can be made, shaped and used?
- Where is the gap between an excellent material and a functioning process: stability, manufacturability, cost?