Chemists behind the creation of metal-organic frameworks awarded Nobel

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa, and Omar M. Yaghi for their groundbreaking work in the design and synthesis of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. These flexible, porous crystals can capture and release a wide variety of molecules, including carbon dioxide, hydrogen, acetylene, and water. 

Read the announcement: 2025 Nobel Prize press release

Video credits:

Written and produced by Vangie Koonce, Anne Hylden, Elaine Seward, and Andrew Sobey
Edited by Andrew Sobey
Narrated by Andrew Sobey
Series produced by Vangie Koonce, Anne Hylden, Andrew Sobey, and Jefferson Beck
Executive produced by Matthew Radcliff

Laureate illustrations by Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Figures by Johan Jarnestad © The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 

Papers shown: 
ACS Central Science: DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c00678, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.9b01006 and DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c00678; ACS Nano: DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5c13712; Chemical Reviews: DOI: 10.1021/cr2003272, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.4c00664 and DOI: 10.1021/cr2003272; Chemistry of Materials: DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c03170 and DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c01706; Environmental Science & Technology: DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b06305; Inorganic Chemistry: DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c02557; Journal of the American Chemical Society: DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c06393, DOI: 10.1021/ja045123o and DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b00733; Molecular Pharmaceutics: DOI: 10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.7b00168; and Nano Letters: DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03225

Additional images: Kyoto University, University of Melbourne, and University of California, Berkeley

Sound effects: Soundsnap

Transcript

There is something this small with the surface area of an entire soccer field that can store hydrogen, capture CO2, harvest water from the air, desalinate water, and increase drug bioavailability. It’s a metal-organic framework, or MOF, and the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three pioneers whose work made this miracle material a reality. Richard Robson was inspired by the structure of diamond to create a porous crystal made from metal ions linked together with organic molecules. He combined copper ions with these tetrahedral molecules, which self-assembled into a novel supramolecular architecture. But these first MOFs were flimsy. Susumu Kitagawa solved that, not by making them rigid, but by making them flexible. These MOFs can adsorb gas molecules and also release them without falling apart. Then, Omar Yaghi opened up the field, making MOFs customizable by varying the molecular links. MOF-5, for example, has extraordinary stability and comes in 16 variants with different pore sizes and chemical properties. All of this work has given us a wide range of applications for MOFs, but we’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible.