Why Metal‑Organic Frameworks Earned the 2025 Nobel Chemistry Prize

The 2025 Nobel Chemistry Prize was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi in recognition of their pioneering contributions to the development of metal‑organic frameworks (MOFs).

Kitagawa, born in 1951 in Kyoto, earned his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 1979 and is a professor there; Robson, born in 1937 in Gloucester, received his Ph.D. from Oxford in 1962 and now teaches at the University of Melbourne; Yaghi, born in 1965 in Amman, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign in 1990 and is a professor at UC Berkeley.

MOFs consist of metal ions that act as nodes linked by long‑chain organic molecules, forming crystalline structures with abundant cavities. By varying the building units, chemists can “customize” MOFs to selectively capture or store specific substances, and the materials can also function as catalysts or conductive media.

Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Chemistry Committee, described MOFs as offering unprecedented, customizable material opportunities for humanity.

The research lineage traces back to 1989 when Robson combined positively charged copper ions with a tetra‑armed ligand, creating an ordered, spacious crystal resembling a diamond full of voids. Although his early products were unstable, Kitagawa and Yaghi later established a solid foundation. Between 1992 and 2003, Kitagawa discovered that gases could freely enter and exit the framework and predicted tunable flexibility, while Yaghi synthesized an exceptionally stable MOF and demonstrated rational design to endow the material with new desirable properties.

Following these foundational discoveries, thousands of distinct MOFs have been synthesized. Researchers anticipate that these materials can help address major challenges such as removing per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water, degrading environmental pharmaceutical residues, capturing carbon dioxide, and extracting water from desert air.