Nobel Prize in Chemistry for MOF pioneers Kitagawa, Robson and Yaghi

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi for their development of metalorganic frameworks, a class of porous molecular architectures with wide-ranging potential applications. The academy announced the prize in Stockholm on October 8, 2025, saying the three scientists’ work created materials with large internal cavities through which gases and other molecules can be stored, separated or chemically transformed.

Metalorganic frameworks, or MOFs, are crystalline lattices formed by metal ions linked with organic molecules to produce enormous internal surface areas and tuneable pores. The structures can trap, release or catalyse reactions of gases and liquids and are being explored for uses that include harvesting water from desert air, capturing carbon dioxide from industrial emissions, storing hydrogen and removing persistent pollutants such as PFAS from water supplies.

The Nobel committee credited distinct contributions from each laureate to turn an early idea into a robust technology. In 1989 Richard Robson demonstrated that metal ions and multiarmed organic linkers can self...