Six years after MOF-177 set the porosity record, the same school broke it twice in one paper. MOF-200 and MOF-210, built from expanded triangular and mixed linkers in non-interpenetrating topologies, posted BET surface areas around 4,530 and 6,240 m2/g, ultra-low crystal densities near 0.25 g/cm3, and correspondingly huge capacities: MOF-210's excess hydrogen uptake at 77 K reached about 8.6 weight percent.
What elevates this beyond record-chasing is the theoretical framing, courtesy of Snurr's simulations. The paper explicitly discusses the geometric ceiling on surface area for carbon-based struts, pointing toward limits in the 10,000 m2/g class, and treats the new materials as steps toward a knowable maximum rather than an open-ended race. Records with an articulated asymptote are science; records without one are sport.
The usual caveats attend. These giant-pore zinc frameworks are moisture-sensitive, activation requires supercritical CO2 drying, and gravimetric records flatter materials whose volumetric performance, the number an engineer sizing a fuel tank actually needs, is undermined by their own emptiness. The paper reports volumetric figures honestly, and they are notably less spectacular, a tension the abstract does not advertise.
Read alongside NU-110 two years later, MOF-210 marks the moment the porosity frontier met diminishing returns and community attention began migrating from how empty to how useful. As the high-water mark of a fifteen-year design program, it earns its place here.