Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025: A New Chemical Architecture

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 honours three scientists who have developed a new form of molecular architecture characterized by large cavities. These molecules can encapsulate important substances – from carbon dioxide to pharmaceuticals – enabling a wealth of different real-world applications.

Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”. Sounds a bit dry? Turns out these porous materials are incredibly useful in the most practical ways. Building on the Laureates’ work, chemists have by now constructed tens of thousands of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that do everything from capturing carbon dioxide, to delivering pharmaceuticals in the body, or providing space for enzymes that break down antibiotics in the environment.

The Benefits of MOFs

The defining features of MOFs are their extremely high porosity, that is, up to 90% of these materials consist of free volume; their internal surface areas are huge. This makes them excellent at storing gases such as hydrogen and methane. The ability of MOFs to isolate components from complex mixtures is extremely useful for the production of clean water and the manufacture of medicines. Owing to the strength of the bonds, MOFs are also thermally extremely stable – up to temperatures of 500 °C. How are MOFs constructed and what determines their striking features?

As hinted at by the name, MOFs are constructed by linking metal ions or clusters such as zinc or copper with organic molecules. Their chemical nature is determined by the very strong chemical bonds between the metals and the organic linkers, which can take the form of metal-oxygen, metal-nitrogen, or metal-sulfur bonds, among others. The properties of MOFs are determined by which metal ions and organic linkers are used, along with the conditions under which they are made. The ability to tweak these parameters allows chemists to control the size and shape of the pores within the MOF, thereby generating a huge variety of different MOFs for different applications.

The MOF Story

The story of MOFs started with the Australian Richard Robson, who in the 1970s was tasked with building crystalline models of molecules using balls and rods for students of chemistry. It occurred to him that the crystalline structures that he built were determined by where the holes were on the balls (which were the atoms). What kind of structures would he get if he used molecules instead of atoms, he wondered? It was in the late 1980s before Robson tested this idea, by making a molecule with a diamond structure in which he used copper ions instead of the carbon found in diamonds and molecules that were attracted to these copper ions. In stark contrast to the highly compact diamonds, the molecule he made had huge internal cavities. Although they remained unstable, Robson could see immediately that the structures he had succeeded in synthesizing had huge potential.

Susumu Kitagawa, in Japan, had a long-standing interest in porous molecular structures, but in his efforts he was also stymied by the instability of his structures. In 1997, however, he managed to make a three-dimensional MOF that was stable and was able to take up gases into its pores. His additional important contribution was his realization that MOFs could form soft materials – in contrast to similar cavity-containing molecules called zeolites. This chemical flexibility also means that MOFs are functionally highly adaptable as well as more efficient than rigid materials.

The Breakthrough and Possible Applications

In the early 1990s in the US, meanwhile, the Jordanian-born Yaghi was attempting to rationally design and synthesize large crystals. This was a difficult process, but he and his team finally made a breakthrough when they used metal ions and organic molecules. The resulting structures could incorporate other molecules in their cavities and were extremely thermally stable. Describing these materials in 1995, Yaghi was the first to coin the term “metal-organic framework”. He has since gone on to develop MOF-5, a MOF with exceptionally large internal surface area and to show how to rationally modify MOFs in order to change their properties.

It is this versatility which underlies the explosion in the use of MOFs in everything from carbon capture to drug delivery to energy storage. What will the future bring? Experts think that nanoscale MOFs could play a huge role in making personalized medicine a reality and forecast that artificial intelligence and machine learning could accelerate progress in the field of MOFs yet further.