Welcome to the Snurr Research Group Site

We are researching how nanoporous materials can (help to) save the world. We are interested in novel materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), as well as traditional materials like zeolites that are already widely used in industry. Porous materials with well-controlled structures at the nanoscale can be extremely useful because of their ability to recognize and discriminate between adsorbed molecules. This leads to applications of nanoporous materials in adsorption separations, catalysis, membrane processes, sensing, and energy storage.

Many of the projects in our group are aimed at solving environmental problems. Examples include reduction of automotive emissions, development of materials to store hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, and development of highly selective catalysts for green chemistry processes.

To solve these problems, we are using powerful molecular modeling techniques to develop a better understanding of surface interactions and dynamics in nanoporous materials. Our goal is to exploit this molecular-level information to develop new, highly-selective processes in adsorption separations, catalysis, and energy storage. Another goal of our research is to develop new simulation methods that can handle an ever-broader range of time and length scales to address important problems that cannot be simulated with current techniques. We perform some experiments in the group, particularly adsorption measurements, and we collaborate very closely with experimental research groups at Northwestern and around the world.

NEWS

• June 2009: Randy Snurr is named Leibniz Professor at the University of Leipzig for the Summer semester 2009.


• April 2009: Group's work on MOFs highlighed in TeraGrid news release.


• March 2009: Congratulations to Denise Ford on defending her MS!


• March 2009: Gloria Emberger has received a Kokes Travel Award to attend the North American Catalysis Society Meeting in San Francisco in June.


• February 2009: Congratulations to Chun-Yi Sung on defending her PhD!


• December 2008: Our paper "Separation and molecular-level segregation of complex alkane mixtures in metal-organic frameworks" (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130, 10884 (2008)) is highlighted in JACS Select.


• November 2008: Graduate student Xiaoying Bao has been named a Ryan Fellow. Congratulations!


• September 2008: Graduate student Patrick Ryan has been awarded a 3M fellowship. Congratulations!


• August 2008: Former graduate student Maria Curet-Arana has accepted a faculty position at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. She is the 6th student or post-doc from the group to take a faculty position since 2004. Others are
  • Tina Duren, University of Edinburgh
  • Ashlie Martini, Purdue University
  • Sudeep Punnathanam, Indian Institute of Science
  • Lev Sarkisov, University of Edinburgh
  • Krista Walton, Kansas State University


• July 2008: Our paper "Carborane-based metal-organic frameworks as highly selective sorbents for CO2 over methane" (Chem. Commun. 2008) is featured on the Nature Chemistry website.


• April 2008: Our paper "Applicability of the BET method for determining surface areas of microporous metal-organic frameworks" (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 8552-8556 (2007)) is featured as a "Hot Paper" on the American Chemical Society website.


• April 2008: Randy Snurr is named a Senior Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry.


• Research News Archive

Contact Information and Mailing Address

Randall Snurr
Dept. of Chemical Engineering
2145 Sheridan Road E136
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208

Tel. 1-847-467-2977
Fax 1-847-467-1018
snurr "at" northwestern "dot" edu

Office Location

Catalysis Building, room 121
2137 Tech Drive
MAP