'Limitless applications': the 'magic powder' that could prevent future crises

Metal organic frameworks could solve everything from water shortages to rotting food. Now Australian scientists have found a way to commercialise it

It sounds like a distant dystopian crisis: a world where global food and water supply chains buckle under the strain of overpopulation and climate change, before being contaminated by weapons of mass destruction unleashed in a desperate fight for access to what little is left.

While the crisis may not be as unrealistic or far away as it seems, scientists are already coming up with potential solutions. One is the curiously named metal organic frameworks (MOFs), a powder of nano-engineered crystals with an apparently endless variety of uses.

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