India, Oct. 9 -- It is like piecing together a Lego structure, but with molecular components. Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, the subject of the research behind this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry, are a class of materials built with clusters of metal ions, connected through organic linkers - and with vast, useful spaces in between.

A real-estate agent, for example, may describe one kind of MOF as "an attractive and very spacious studio apartment, specifically designed for your life as a water molecule", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences suggested on Wednesday while awarding the Chemistry Nobel to Richard Robson (currently with the University of Melbourne), Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University) and Omar M Yaghi (University of Berke...