An international team of scientists has developed a material that can remove nitrogen dioxide gas and other toxic greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

This discovery could lead to air filtration technologies that cost-effectively capture and convert large quantities of gases, reducing pollution and global warming.

The research, which was led by The University of Manchester, is being published in Nature Materials. The discovery was confirmed using neutron scattering technique at the United States Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The material, which is called MFM-300(Al), is a metal-organic framework (MOF). MOFs are a class of porous crystalline materials that can act as sponges to trap gases in order to purify and separate them.

The MOF developed by the research team is the first of its kind to exhibit selective, fully reversible and repeatable capability to remove nitrogen dioxide gas from the atmosphere. Simply put, this means that the material can take away and store toxic gas molecules over and over again, which was previously not possible.

Capturing greenhouse and toxic gases from the atmosphere is a challenge due to their relatively low concentrations in the atmosphere and the presence of moisture in the air. This can negatively affect separating targeted gas molecules from other gases. Another challenge is finding a practical way to release a captured gas. MOFs offer solutions to many of these challenges.

Dr Sihai Yang, one of the study’s lead authors and a lecturer in inorganic chemistry at the University’s School of Chemistry, said: “Despite the highly reactive nature of nitrogen dioxide, our material proved extremely robust.