High-Performance, Energy-Absorbing Material

Pressurized insertion of aqueous solutions into water-repellent nano-porous materials, such as zeolites and metal-organic frameworks, could help to create high-performance, energy-absorbing systems. Researchers experimented with hydrothermally stable zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) with a hydrophobic cage-like molecular structure, finding that such systems are remarkably effective energy absorbers at realistic, high-rate loading conditions and this phenomenon is associated with the water clustering and mobility in nanocages.