The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi on Oct. 8, 2025, for the growth of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, that are tunable crystal buildings with extraordinarily excessive porosity. These are a category of supplies which have actually modified the best way scientists design and take into consideration matter, inspiring progress in numerous purposes.
I’m a MOF scientist and for many people within the subject, this recognition feels each historic and deeply private. MOFs are usually not simply elegant crystals you’d admire beneath a microscope; they’re a whole universe of buildings, every like a miniature metropolis of tunnels and rooms ready to be stuffed. They’ve been my scientific dwelling since I first stepped into analysis, and so they nonetheless really feel slightly bit like magic to me.
So, what precisely are MOFs?
Metallic-organic frameworks are like crystalline scaffolds constructed from two elements: metals that act like connective joints and natural—that’s, carbon-based—molecules that behave as bridges to hyperlink these joints in a repeating sample. The result’s a extremely ordered, porous framework—a form of molecular structure that’s each sturdy and filled with empty area.
These frameworks are so porous, like sponges with tiny voids, that it’s nearly inconceivable to image them. One gram of a MOF has so many pores that it might expose as a lot inside floor space as a soccer subject. It’s astonishing {that a} handful of powder might conceal a whole panorama of floor inside it.
That giant floor space is without doubt one of the distinctive issues that make MOFs so highly effective, and it comes from the nanoscale pores—tiny molecular rooms that may lure, separate, rework or transport gases, ions and different molecules. In a method, MOFs are like molecular accommodations with numerous doorways, every programmed to confess solely sure visitors.
Why scientists love them
What fascinates me most about metal-organic frameworks is their limitless design area. Simply by glancing on the periodic desk, each steel might, in precept, function a cornerstone, and numerous natural molecules can act as bridges connecting them. Even utilizing the identical mixture can produce totally completely different architectures.
To date, scientists have synthesized greater than 90,000 MOFs, and computational chemists have predicted a whole lot of hundreds extra. Few materials households provide this a lot versatility.
I like to consider MOFs as puzzles or Lego units, however on the atomic scale. You’ll be able to exchange a single piece, or change its colour or form, and find yourself with a cloth that behaves utterly otherwise.
Add a brand new “ornament”—what chemists name a useful group—and the framework immediately acknowledges a brand new molecule. Stretch the natural bridges, and the identical structure inflates like a balloon, giving what we name isoreticular MOFs. These have the identical construction, however larger pores. In brief, MOFs can are available nearly each possible form, measurement and texture.
Past their scientific class, MOFs are extremely promising for real-world applied sciences. Completely different buildings and functionalities result in completely different properties and, subsequently, completely different makes use of.
Some MOFs act as molecular sieves, selectively capturing carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust and even immediately from air. Others clear polluted water by eradicating heavy metals, dyes or “perpetually chemical substances.”
Sure MOFs can even carry medicine or imaging brokers contained in the physique for medical purposes. Within the power world, they operate as electrodes or electrolytes that make batteries safer and extra environment friendly. And lots of function catalysts, accelerating chemical reactions that rework one molecule into one other.
After I started my Ph.D., my senior colleagues warned me that MOFs is perhaps too delicate—lovely crystals that might crumble on the first trace of air or moisture. And certainly, a few of the early frameworks have been fragile curiosities, admired extra for his or her class than their endurance. However that notion has modified dramatically.
Many MOFs at the moment are remarkably strong. The fabric I first labored on was a titanium-based metal-organic framework named MIL-125. It was first reported by Gérard Férey, one of many foundational figures within the MOF and porous framework neighborhood who sadly died in 2017. MIL-125 was not solely steady, it was virtually indestructible in my lab. After synthesizing two grams of it, I saved it on my bench in an open vial and used that very same batch for each catalytic experiment all through my Ph.D. No glovebox, no desiccator—only a jar of yellow powder sitting fortunately on my bench.
That have taught me one thing vital: Whereas stability could be a legit concern, MOFs have grown up. Because of sensible chemistry, now we have supplies that may stand up to water, warmth and repeated use. Since their basis, researchers all over the world have launched new properties to those supplies—from electrical conductivity to mild responsiveness—and, crucially, made main progress in scaling up MOF synthesis for industrial purposes.
Scaling is the important thing step in bridging the hole between basic discovery and large-scale deployment. Researchers are now not content material with finding out MOFs in milligrams—we’re typically planning for grams, kilograms and past.
Some startups are turning these advances into actual applied sciences—from storing gases extra safely, to pulling clear water straight from desert air, to constructing extra energy-efficient air conditioners. What as soon as felt like science fiction—powders that breathe, lure and rework molecules—is now science truth.
Regardless of these advances, researchers might want to proceed enhancing the steadiness and scalability of MOFs to totally notice these supplies’ potential in the true world.
A Nobel second that honors creativity
The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry goes past honoring three exceptional scientists—it celebrates a whole neighborhood: a era of chemists and engineers who remodeled a single concept right into a thriving subject. The pioneering visions of Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi laid the foundations for a vibrant self-discipline that has grown to embody every thing from gasoline storage and catalysis to power and environmental applied sciences.
After I attended my first MOF convention as a second-year Ph.D. pupil, I listened in awe to most of the pioneers of this subject, a few of whom at the moment are Nobel laureates. Again then, MOFs felt like magical sponges, and that sense of marvel by no means left me. It led me to proceed my analysis on conductive MOFs: supplies that may carry electrical energy. Now, in my very own analysis group, we examine how these frameworks could make batteries safer and extra environment friendly, and the way they will seize waste gases and switch them into helpful chemical substances utilizing daylight.
For me, this Nobel Prize celebrates greater than a discovery, it celebrates a philosophy: Chemistry is inventive, we are able to design and engineer matter with creativeness, and generally vacancy will be the very essence of a cloth.
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