{"id":463829,"date":"2026-02-09T14:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463829\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:12:09","slug":"uc-berkeley-chemists-claims-new-material-captures-carbon-faster-than-ever-research-and-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463829\/","title":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley chemists claims new material captures carbon faster than ever | Research And Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Berkeley lab led by Nobel laureate<\/a> and campus professor of chemistry Omar M. Yaghi has created a new material to capture carbon dioxide from the air \u2014 and claims to do so faster than ever before.<\/p>\n

Published in Nature Sustainability, the material uses covalent organic frameworks, or COFs, to capture carbon. COFs are polymers made entirely of organic materials that act as a net to catch carbon dioxide in the air.<\/p>\n

The most recent iteration of the frameworks\u2019 design, dubbed COF-1000, builds upon the previous COF-999<\/a> model that was released in 2024. COF-1000 is structured with larger pores, allowing it to capture more carbon dioxide roughly three times faster than the previous model.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOFs could be the ultimate and ideal materials as they offer a unique convergence of properties \u2014 lightweight composition, structural precision, chemical stability, large capacity, and rapid transport \u2014 that are all essential for direct air capture.\u201d Yaghi said in an email. \u201cCOF-1000 demonstrates how this evolution enables us to design not just for uptake, but for speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paper was coauthored by five members of Yaghi\u2019s lab, which included one undergraduate student, Neda S. Sabeva.<\/p>\n

Yaghi and his team are now beginning to apply this technology within industries through his company Atoco, which applies Yaghi\u2019s research to solve water scarcity and global warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe air is only 0.04% CO2, which is one molecule (out of) 2,500 other molecules in the air,\u201d said Zihui Zhou, the study\u2019s first author and a\u00a0postdoctoral fellow with the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. \u201cWe found this material can be very selective and only captures CO2 from the air (without) being infected by nitrogen, oxygen (and) argon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhou said the lab is attempting to reduce the cost of manufacturing COFs in order to make industry use more feasible in the future. The team is also looking to use AI tools to discover and synthesize materials faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Alain Goeppert, a senior research scientist at USC\u2019s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, the paper is not immediately applicable even though it does provide an interesting methodology for carbon capture in COFs.<\/p>\n

Goeppert said other materials can absorb the same amount of CO2 from the air and that COFs are currently too expensive to have real world applications now, to the point where researchers would need to \u201cdramatically\u201d reduce the cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very nice work, but it\u2019s just not exceptional,\u201d Goeppert said, \u201cAnd I think if they want to use COF, they will have to \u2026 come down with the cost a lot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Berkeley lab led by Nobel laureate and campus professor of chemistry Omar M. Yaghi has created a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[189478,189475,189480,49,48,189479,189474,189477,189473,66,6405,189476],"class_list":["post-463829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-alain-goeppert","tag-atoco","tag-bakar-institute-of-digital-materials-for-the-planet","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-loker-hydrocarbon-research-institute","tag-nature-sustainability","tag-neda-s-sabeva","tag-omar-m-yaghi","tag-science","tag-usc","tag-zihui-zhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}