MOF pioneers win 2025 Nobel Chemistry for porous materials

STOCKHOLM: Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering metal–organic frameworks, crystalline materials with vast internal surfaces and tunable pores. The Nobel committee said MOFs enable advances from harvesting water out of desert air to capturing carbon dioxide and storing toxic gases.

The committee highlighted the extraordinary porosity of these structures, saying a piece the size of a sugar cube can contain a surface area comparable to a football pitch. One member likened their capacity to Hermione’s handbag in the Harry Potter stories, underscoring how small amounts can hold large volumes of gas.

This year’s chemistry prize, worth 11 million Swedish krona, is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Speaking after the announcement, Kitagawa said his ambition is to separate and convert components of air such as CO2 and water using renewable energy. Yaghi called the award a case of basic science yielding practical benefits, pointing to MOF deployments at cement plants to trap carbon before it reaches the atmosphere.

The Academy cited a growing library of MOFs—now numbering in the tens of thousands—with emerging uses that include removing persistent PFAS chemicals from water and breaking down trace pharmaceuticals in the environment.

Kitagawa is a professor at Kyoto University, Robson at the University of Melbourne, and Yaghi at the University of California, Berkeley. Their careers span three continents; Yaghi, a Jordanian-American born to Palestinian refugee parents, has often described science as a great equaliser. Robson said he received the call from Stockholm shortly before the announcement and celebrated quietly at home.