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Scientists at Oregon State University have taken a big step toward lighting and display technologies that are more energy efficient and better for the planet. The work centers around crystalline, porous materials known as metal organic frameworks, often abbreviated as MOFs, and points toward next-generation materials that may end reliance on rare earth metals.

The study by Kyriakos Stylianou, associate professor of chemistry in the OSU College of Science, and graduate students Kyle Smith and Ankit Yadav appears in Nature Communications.

The findings are important because displays—ubiquitous in communications, computing, medical monitoring and many other aspects of everyday life—and lighting contribute heavily to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The rare earth metals that underpin those technologies—europium, terbium, yttrium, cerium, gadolinium and others—are expensive and environmentally hazardous to mine and process.

Made up of positively charged metal ions surrounded by organic “linker” molecules, metal organic frameworks have nanosized pores and tunable structural properties. They can be designed with a variety of components that determine the MOF’s properties, and for this project the scientists developed novel MOF structures that combine two types of porous crystals to enhance light emission.

The researchers explored different ways of combining the different types of crystals. One of those methods, known as MOF-on-MOF—the crystals were stacked like building blocks—resulted in light emission that was roughly four times as energy-efficient as seen in traditional MOFs.

“By controlling how the components interact, we discovered how to reduce energy losses that typically limit brightness in these materials,” Stylianou said. “This higher efficiency means that future LEDs could produce the same amount of light while consuming far less electricity.”

In the United States, Stylianou notes, lighting and display systems consume about 213 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually—a level of energy usage that accounts for 13% of global carbon dioxide emissions, primarily because 80% of electricity generation in the U.S. comes from the burning of fossil fuels.

Replacing rare-earth-based components in lighting and display systems with the new, more sustainable MOF structures would simultaneously reduce production costs, ecological impact and energy consumption, he said. It would also provide an alternative to elements whose global supply chains are fraught with geopolitical tensions.

“There’s an urgent need for advanced, efficient fluorescent materials, and we think our new MOFs can help fill that need,” Stylianou said. “We see a lot of potential in their ability to have economic, environmental and climate impacts.”

Anthropic announced Tuesday that it raised $13 billion in a funding round valuing the artificial intelligence startup at $183 billion.

The company will use the capital infusion to expand capacity, deepen safety research, and support international expansion.

Anthropic, known for its Claude chatbot and AI models, competes with offerings from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft in a generative AI race that is costing tens of billions of dollars.

According to reports, Anthropic’s main rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is in discussions to allow employees to cash out shares in a transaction that would value the company at about $500 billion.

The sky-high valuations come despite emerging doubts about whether the financing of generative AI startups is sustainable, with companies requiring high spending for computing and chips while revenue struggles to keep pace.

“We are seeing exponential growth in demand across our entire customer base,” Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in a blog post. “This financing demonstrates investors’ extraordinary confidence in our financial performance.”

Heavily backed by Amazon, Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives.

The company positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development.

The San Francisco-based startup said it has more than 300,000 business customers and that the number of accounts on pace to generate more than $100,000 annually is nearly seven times larger than a year ago.

The funding round was led by investment firm ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Fidelity Management and Research Company.

Anthropic said it has grown rapidly since Claude’s initial release in early 2023, with its annual revenue rate quintupling to $5 billion since early this year.

The company last week settled a class-action lawsuit with a group of US authors; details of the settlement were not disclosed.

A federal judge in June sided with Anthropic regarding training its artificial intelligence models on copyrighted books without authors’ permission. However, the judge ruled that downloading pirated copies to build a general-purpose library constituted copyright infringement, regardless of eventual training use.

© 2025 AFP