October 7, 2025
2 min read
2025 Chemistry Nobel Goes to Molecular Sponges That Purify Water, Store Energy, and Clean Up the Environment
Three scientists, including one from the U.S., share the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing “metal-organic frameworks,” versatile molecular cages that can trap contaminants, store energy and possibly deliver drugs to specific areas of the body.
vanbeets/Getty Images (medal)
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded for a versatile technology that can be used for an astonishing variety of purposes, from environmental remediation to drug delivery and energy storage.
Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi shared the award for their development of metal-organic frameworks, chemical cages that have small openings that can capture other small and diverse molecules. MOFs, as they are known, are being explored for their use in wastewater cleanup, PFAS removal, timed or multi-drug release systems, and more.
The cages are made of metal ions held together by organic, or carbon-containing, molecules. The cages can be one-dimensional or multi-dimensional, and they can be formed from a host of metals and organic linkers.
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Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne dreamed up the first MOFs, inspired by the tetrahedral, or pyramid-like shape that carbon atoms take to form diamonds. He mixed a form of copper with a nitrile, an organic compound with nitrogen bonded to carbon, and watched as it formed a repeating structure with small holes in it.
Susumu Kitagawa, of Kyoto University and Omar M. Yaghi, of the University of California, Berkeley, furthered MOF research and applications. Kitagawa created MOFs that were flexible and learned that gases could flow in and out of MOFs. He told the audience at a Nobel press conference in Stockholm on Wednesday that his dream is to use MOFs to separate the components of air for use in making other materials, via reusable energy. Yaghi, widely credited for expanding the development of MOFs, created stable frameworks from many combinations of metal ions and organic linkers.
The three researchers will divide the Nobel prize money, which comes to 11 million Swedish kronor, or about $1 million.
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