Eugeny Alexandrov, an employee of the SCTMS, became one of 15 participants representing Russia at the Fifth Forum of Young Scientists from the countries of BRICS. Eugeny was nominated as a candidate by the Samara Polytech administration. The forum was held from 21 to 25 September in the video conference mode.This year, the following topics were discussed: ecology, materials science and the use of artificial intelligence in these areas.
During five days young scientists (up to 40 years) and young innovators (up to 30 years) from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa shared their scientific research and participated in discussions on a specially created interactive platform. All interested could join to view panel sessions with reports by young scientists, pitches about science in plain language, an intellectual quiz and master classes. The host country this year was Russia, and the conference was held at the South Ural State University (in Chelyabinsk).
Eugeny Alexandrov is the head of the laboratory for the synthesis of new crystalline materials at SCTMS and is one of the leading Russian specialists in the design of functional materials based on metal-organic frameworks. Eugeny’s report addressed all the thematic areas of the forum: "Topological methods in the formation of an expert system for the design of materials based on coordination polymers and porous organic crystals that solve environmental problems".
For about two years, Eugeny Alexandrov has been actively engaged in the development of an expert system for predicting the composition, structure and properties of chemical compounds, crystals and materials on their base, and in the design of new materials with promising properties. The most extensive topological taxonomy of structural motifs of more than 90,000 metal-organic coordination polymers and 1,000 organic porous crystals has been created. Sorption, catalysis, optical effects, mechanical and chemical responsiveness of the material, ionic and electronic conductivity – these and other properties have in particular the metal-organic framework polymers designed by Eugeny. These polymers are unique in their porosity: one gram of a substance can have a pore surface area of up to 10,000 m2, which is comparable to the area of a football field, and it is precisely this feature that determines the outstanding catalytic and sorption properties. Such materials can be used for different types of filtration – from selective sorption of specific toxic and carcinogenic substances from an aqueous solution, to adjusting the pores of the optimal size in the material to increase the octane number of gasoline. Metal-organic framework polymers with luminescent properties have great prospects.