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🏅 Metal-organic frameworks: The Nobel Prize with room to grow

Metaphors are a great way to explain complex terms in relatable language. When awarding this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences members and commentators applied no less than five different creative analogies to describe the groundbreaking research on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that took home the prize. Indulge us while we dwell on these mental images for a spell:

• Like “Hermione’s handbag or Mary Poppins’ carpet bag”, MOFs look small on the outside but are vast on the inside. The large internal surface area of MOFs allows them to store immense quantities of gas in a tiny volume.
  
• Like “rooms in a hotel”, there are cavities within the molecular structure of MOFs. Gas molecules or other chemicals can check in and out of these tiny, well-ordered “rooms”.