Revealing Insights from Prof. Christian Serre: Driving Innovation in MOF Science and Applications
Chemical Synthesis recently had the privilege of interviewing Prof. Christian Serre, a distinguished MOF materials scientist and Director of the Porous Materials Research Institute at CNRS Paris. This interview offers a comprehensive perspective on Prof. Christian Serre's journey in the MOF field from foundational chemistry to real-world applications. He reflected on the key challenges of MOF synthesis, structural control, and property prediction, noting that although AI and machine learning remain limited in handling the complexity of large MOF architectures, the exceptional tunability and chemical diversity of MOFs continue to provide unique advantages. Prof. Serre also emphasized that successful industrial translation requires solid laboratory demonstrations, patent protection, and close collaboration with start-ups. For young scientists, he advocates pursuing intrinsically motivating research topics, building strong technical expertise, and maintaining a broad understanding of porous materials beyond MOFs, positioning them as an important addition to the wider family of zeolites, carbons, and clays. Overall, the conversation highlights the evolving landscape of MOF science and underscores the chemist's role in balancing fundamental innovation with practical impact.
Watch the following video for expert insights from Prof. Christian Serre:
Interview Questions:
1. When you first started working on MOFs as a student, did you ever think they would become such a versatile material?
2. You're the discoverer of the MIL class of MOFs, so how did that happen? What was it like working in the lab at that time?
3. MOFs have encountered various challenges you faced, and which ones do you still remain today?
4. Among your MOFs, such as the MIL series, which one do you think faces the biggest challenges in industrial applications? And which one is your personal favorite-or the most challenging to work with?
5. If you could design a perfect MOF, what characteristics do you think it should have?
6. How can we involve AI and machine in the study of MOFs? Could you give us some ideas on how to do this?
7. Your group is doing such versatile and amazing work.What's the one project that stands out as a real bottleneck, but also impresses you? Is it your own work as a student or researcher, or the work of your students?
8. Which characterization of MOFs do you think could be worthy of a Nobel Prize among all materials?
9. Some MOFs aren't stable above 500 ℃.Which characterization techniques could be improved to make them more suitable for high-temperature applications in industry？
10. What are your thoughts on global collaborations between academia and industry?
11. What advice would you give to young or emerging scientists working on porous materials?
About the Interviewee:
Prof. Christian Serre, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, is a globally recognized leader in the fields of porous materials and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). He serves as a Professor at ESPCI Paris and Director of the Center for Materials Structure and Interfaces at the Institut de Chimie de Paris, and he is also the Director of the Porous Materials Research Institute at CNRS Paris. His research is dedicated to the design and synthesis of novel MOFs and hybrid porous materials, with applications spanning gas separation, carbon capture, catalysis, and biomedical science. Prof. Serre has made pioneering contributions to flexible MOFs, water-stable MOFs, and bio-MOFs. He has published more than 400 papers in top-tier journals such as Science, Nature Materials, Nature Chemistry, JACS, and Angewandte Chemie. He has been repeatedly listed as a Highly Cited Researcher worldwide and currently holds an H-index of 134. Prof. Serre has introduced several original concepts in MOF chemistry, including structural mechanisms and green, scalable synthesis strategies. As a key figure driving both scientific advancement and industrial translation of MOF materials, he continues to exert significant and lasting influence across the global materials chemistry community.
Editor: Qian-Ni Bian
Language Editor: Emma Chen
Production Editor: Ting Xu
Respectfully Submitted by the Editorial Office of Chemical Synthesis
