MOFs offer safer solution for handling fluorinated gases that can ‘tame the tiger’

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) could offer a safer method for handling fluorinated gases in the lab, US researchers have found. It is hoped the technique will assist the synthesis of fluorinated compounds required in medicinal chemistry, agriculture and biomedical imaging.

‘The problem is that these fluorinated building blocks are all gases at room temperature, and most are environmentally destructive, toxic and/or flammable,’ explains lead researcher Kaitlyn Keasler, from Cornell University in New York, US. ‘Safely working with gaseous reagents requires the use of specialised equipment, or a means to generate the gas in situ, neither of which is amenable to reaction development,’ she adds.