Making molecules glow bright in a metal frame

Enlarge (credit: Tim Klapdor)

We enjoy the life of plenty when it comes to technology. We like the speed at which information flows to us, carried on the back of hard-working photons. We wax lyrical, if a bit amateurishly, about the color and clarity of OLED televisions. Without our technological mastery of light, our society would be a good deal poorer.

That mastery, though, didn't appear out of thin air. It usually takes decades to go from the first "Wait, did that just glow?" to a technology being taken for granted.

So, what is the next big thing? No one really knows for sure, but I'm going to put in a good word for light-emitting metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Light-emitting MOFs combine all the good things that we associate with organic light emitters with the best things about inorganic light emitters. If it all pans out, engineers will have a platform that has flexibility in design, simplicity in fabrication, and robustness in use. Before today, I wondered why I had not seen many results on light-emitting MOFs. And, now I realize that, like every other light-emitting technology, we are still in the "decade or more of work" phase with them.

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