‘I worked on it little by little, with the help of a beer’: Making MOFs out of paper

Chemistry World spoke to Ryo Horikoshi, a chemist at Okayama University of Science, about the stunning paper models of supramolecular structures he has been crafting for his undergraduate students. He told us about how he came up with the idea, how he wants to inspire students to love supramolecular chemistry like he does and how the models are simple enough to create that anyone can make them with a little time and patience.

What made you turn to papercraft to convey chemistry concepts?

I have been a member of Okayama University of Science since 2024, where I teach basic chemistry and labs to mainly first-year students in the department of biology and geology. Some of them are good at chemistry, others are not so good.

Why did I start using papercraft teaching materials? I heard that Professor Makoto Fujita at the University of Tokyo, a leading researcher on metal–organic cages/cycles (MOCs) and crystalline sponges, had made his laboratory paperless. I had wanted to introduce MOCs to students for long time and it occurred to me that it might be possible to create papercraft models of Fujita’s MOCs and crystalline sponges. It’s quite possible that traditional Japanese origami may have inspired me.