Croatian-led team finds simpler way to control materials used in carbon capture

ZAGREB, 21 July 2026 (Croatia Week) – An international research team led by scientists from Croatia’s Ruđer Bošković Institute (IRB) has shown that just a few drops of carefully selected liquid can help control the internal structure of advanced porous materials.

The finding could offer a simpler and more resource-efficient way to produce materials with potential applications in carbon dioxide capture, fuel purification and the separation of useful chemicals from complex mixtures, Ruđer Bošković Institute said.

The research brings together scientists from Croatia, Poland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States at a time when industries worldwide are searching for cleaner and more efficient ways to develop materials supporting climate and energy technologies.

Porous materials are often described as highly precise molecular filters. Their microscopic pores allow some molecules to pass through while trapping others. The size and arrangement of those pores determine whether a material can, for example, separate carbon dioxide from industrial gases, purify fuels or isolate specific gases used in manufacturing.

A major challenge is that the same chemical ingredients can form several different structures, not all of which have the desired properties.

Finding the right structure traditionally involves extensive experimentation, significant quantities of solvents, heating and considerable energy use.

The new study demonstrates a way of influencing this process using only very small amounts of liquid during the mixing and grinding of powders.

The researchers focused on a well-known class of porous, sponge-like materials made from zinc and the organic compound imidazole. These materials belong to a family known as zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, or ZIFs.

Rather than producing the materials in large quantities of solvent, the scientists used a mechanochemical process in which the starting materials were ground together with a carefully selected liquid additive.

The liquid acted as a structure-directing agent, influencing how the atoms and molecules assembled into the final solid material.

In tests involving 45 different liquid solutions, the same starting ingredients produced 13 different material forms belonging to eight different structural classes. Two of the structures had not previously been reported.

The researchers also observed short-lived intermediate stages in the formation process. These provided insight into how the materials develop and could help scientists avoid unsuccessful pathways when targeting a specific structure.

“We are no longer simply observing how materials form, we are directing how they assemble,” said corresponding author Dr Ivana Brekalo of the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

The results suggest the possibility of developing a more systematic approach to materials design: identifying a desired property, determining the structure required to achieve it and selecting the liquid additive capable of directing the formation of that structure.

X-rays and supercomputers reveal how the process works

To identify and verify the structures produced, the researchers used X-ray techniques in Croatia and at a major national laboratory in the United States.

X-ray measurements provide a detailed fingerprint of the arrangement of atoms within a material, allowing scientists to distinguish between different structures.

The experimental work was combined with extensive computer simulations carried out using supercomputing resources in Croatia, the United Kingdom, Poland and Canada.

These calculations helped explain why particular liquid additives led to specific structural arrangements.

Together, the experiments and simulations provide a basis for a more predictable approach to producing porous materials – potentially moving the field closer to a system in which a desired material property can be linked to a target structure and a specific structure-directing additive.

Because a material’s internal structure determines many of its properties, greater control over its formation could help scientists develop more effective materials for carbon dioxide capture, industrial filtration and catalysis.

The approach could also reduce the amount of solvent and energy required during production, potentially making the process faster, less wasteful and more sustainable.

The researchers say the findings could contribute to the development of materials needed for decarbonisation and modern industrial production, although further work will be required to assess how the approach can be translated into larger-scale applications.

The study, “Mechanochemical Solid Form Screening of Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks Using Structure-Directing Liquid Additives,” was carried out by researchers from the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Croatia, Georgetown University in the United States, the University of Warsaw in Poland, McGill University in Canada and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.