The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced this morning! The winners were pioneers in constructing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These are three-dimensional porous materials made up of metal centers and organic molecule linkers that have a surprising amount of empty space. This empty space could be used for storage, gas uptake, and separating mixtures.
When I got to work this morning I made a slide, then gave a five-minute presentation to each of my three classes about these materials and why they were considered Nobel-prize worthy. I was also happy to tell them that an alum of our program (who was a student in a couple of classes) went on to a graduate program to work with one of the Nobelists, and then recently started a company based on these materials. I also mentioned one of my colleagues who was working on MOFs.
Then I told them about my brief MOF fling. My graduate program had a “proposal exam” where I had to write three proposals (two out-of-field) and defend them in a grilling oral exam. It was the late ‘90s and MOFs were a nascent field. I figured no one knew much about them so I wouldn’t get grilled too badly, so I wrote about MOF research as one of my out-of-field proposals. I passed! I then parlayed that proposal into my research statement when applying for faculty positions. But after I started my position, I got distracted by other interesting projects and never ended up working on MOFs. Oh, well. I’m still happy working on self-assembly problems, even if they are not MOF related.
The mass media quickly followed suit with their announcement of the Nobel Prize awarded today. The moniker that has caught on to describe the work is “Hermione’s Handbag”. I also told students about this, which garnered a lot of smiles. For those who don’ t know what this magical object is, Hermione (of Harry Potter fame), the cleverest witch of her age, had a handbag where the inside could hold much more than you might expect if you saw the small bag from the outside. An “extension” charm is supposedly used to do this, although how it works in practice is less than clear. Does it shrink all the materials when you put it into the bag? I’ve previously discussed the tricky chemical considerations of shrinking the size of atoms. Or does it give you access to some other adjacent space not part of the standard three-dimensions we experience? Folded space maybe, as string theorists might postulate. Or maybe a wormhole to some other space… all speculation at this point. Space-filling might be an odd duck; or an Occamy.
MOFs are not like Hermione’s Handbag; they have no magical extension to occupy more volume than the size of their pores. What was surprising was how many more molecules they could uptake compared to zeolites, another porous material that had been known for decades. There was both early excitement and skepticism about MOFs in those early years. I kept up with the literature through the decade of the aughts, but not so much after that. I’m pleased that I actually know something about the content for this year’s prize, and I’m pleased that a Harry Potter magical object analogy was used, even if it’s wrong. It gives the sense of the surprise you might have in your first encounter with Hermione’s Handbag.
