The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi as winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks, known as MOFs. The jury recognizes a contribution that has paved the way for the design of materials with finely tunable properties.
This decision rewards a powerful idea: building crystal-clear networks with huge internal cavities where molecules can enter and exit at will. Thanks to this porous architecture, MOFs can be used to capture carbon dioxide, extract water from the air in arid environments, store dangerous gases, or drive chemical reactions with great efficiency; the equipment amounts to 11 million Swedish kronor, distributed among the three winners.
Who they are and what is awarded
Kitagawa (Kyoto University), Robson (University of Melbourne) and Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley) They are recognized for having consolidated a new way of thinking about matter: assembling metal ions and organic linkers to create three-dimensional networks with customized channels and pores. The Academy emphasizes that this approach provides chemists with tangible tools to address global challenges such as CO2 capture or the scarcity of fresh water.
The Nobel Committee emphasizes that these materials offer on-demand functions, thanks to their enormous internal surface area and the ability to fine-tune their chemistry. According to those responsible for the evaluation, they allow us to imagine practical solutions that seemed like science fiction just a few years ago.
Voices from the academic field have emphasized the scope of this field: researchers who have collaborated with the awardees highlight that MOFs are versatile materials with potential impact on energy, environment and health, and its development has changed the way porous solids are conceived.
The three scientists, international leaders in the field, have also promoted a very active research community around the world, with hundreds of laboratories generating tens of thousands of structural variants for specific applications.
What are MOFs and why do they matter?
MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) are crystalline networks where metal nodes They are connected by long organic ligands, forming a kind of three-dimensional scaffolding. This framework generates pores of different sizes and geometries that can accommodate gases and other molecules, with fine control over what enters, what exits, and how they interact.
The grace of the system is in its modularity: by changing the metal or the organic linker, the chemical and physical properties from the network. This customization capability allows, for example, to enhance CO2 adsorption, facilitate catalytic reactions, or selectively target persistent water pollutants.
In practical terms, the material appears as tiny crystals, with the appearance of a grain of salt, but with a huge internal surface If measured by unit mass, this surface area is what makes it possible to store large quantities of gas or house catalysts very efficiently.
A common analogy is to see these materials as a building with rooms for molecules: Depending on the chosen “floor” (metals and ligands), the building offers larger rooms, narrower corridors or active walls that react to what enters.
From the first scaffolding to stable materials
The starting point is in 1989, when Richard Robson combined copper ions with a four-armed molecule and obtained an ordered, spacious crystal, replete with internal cavities. This structure demonstrated the potential of the approach, but proved fragile and collapsed easily outside the solvent.
Between 1992 and 2003, Susumu Kitagawa demonstrated that gases could Go in and go out of networks without destroying them and anticipated the possibility of providing them with structural flexibility, a key property for them to react intelligently to changes in the environment.
In parallel, Omar M. Yaghi achieved MOF of great stability and established rational design principles to incorporate desired functions into pores. His group also demonstrated devices capable of harvesting water from desert air by harnessing nighttime humidity and releasing it with the warmth of dawn.
Thanks to these advances, the field went from fragile prototypes to robust platforms and scalable, opening the door to industrial adoption and pilot trials in energy, environment and chemical technologies.
Applications and challenges ahead
The list of potential uses is extensive: CO2 capture from industrial streams or directly from the air, storage of hydrogen and other gases, separation of persistent compounds such as PFAS in water, or the degradation of pharmaceutical residues in the aquatic environment.
There are MOFs that retain ethylene gas to slow down ripening Some are made from fruit, others encapsulate enzymes that cleanse traces of antibiotics, and some act as barriers to manage toxic gases in industrial processes. All of this relies on the ability to adjust the geometry and chemistry of the pores.
Experts from leading European centres highlight that this technology has consolidated a different way of designing materials, combining the stability of metal chemistry with the versatility of organic chemistry. Companies and laboratories are already working on scaling and integration with real-world devices.
Challenges remain to be solved, such as improving durability under demanding conditions, reducing production costs and optimizing the selectivity and regeneration in repeated cycles; however, proofs of concept and early deployments are promising.
The recognition of Kitagawa, Robson, and Yaghi crystallizes a decade of breakthroughs that have changed the face of materials science: a modular strategy to create porous solids with tailor-made functions that are already finding their way into solutions to climate change, water management, and sustainable chemistry.
