Three scientists, Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar Yaghi, jointly won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday, October 8th. They were recognized for their pioneering research on Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and the development of a material likened to “Hermione’s handbag” from the Harry Potter series. This material has the ability to store massive capacities in a compact volume, offering potential solutions to challenges such as energy storage, pollution control, and water scarcity.
MOFs are highly porous crystalline structures composed of metal atoms and organic molecules interwoven to create vast internal spaces for gases and other chemical substances to flow through.
According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, these materials possess astonishing surface areas, with a small piece of porous material the size of a sugar cube potentially equating to that of a large football field. Olof Ramstrom, a member of the Nobel Chemistry Committee, vividly described, “With a small amount of such material, it’s almost like Hermione’s handbag from ‘Harry Potter’. It can store large amounts of gas in an extremely small volume.”
Heiner Linke, the chairman of the Nobel Chemistry Committee, likened the immense cavities within MOFs to “rooms in a hotel” for molecules to enter and exit.
The breakthrough of MOFs lies in their design versatility and wide-ranging potential applications. Currently, MOFs have been proven effective in environmental governance, such as extracting water from desert air, capturing carbon dioxide, storing toxic gases, separating toxic PFAS from water, and breaking down pharmaceutical residues in the environment.
In terms of clean energy, they are pivotal in hydrogen storage, crucial for the future development of clean energy sources.
One of the laureates, Susumu Kitagawa, is a professor at Kyoto University in Japan. He expressed his dream during the press conference of capturing and separating elements from the air, such as carbon dioxide and water, then converting them into useful materials using renewable energy. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences applauded the construction of tens of thousands of unique MOFs by chemists, with some potentially aiding in solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges.
Although the concept of MOFs was initially proposed by Richard Robson, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the structures were initially unstable. It was Omar Yaghi, a Jordanian-American scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who through rigorous crystallographic methods, designed and created the first robust and durable Metal-Organic Framework (MOF-5), igniting the development in this field.
The Chemistry Prize is the third Nobel Prize awarded this year, with the laureates sharing a prize amount of 11 million Swedish Kronor (approximately 1.2 million USD). Following tradition, the fourth Nobel Prize of 2025—the Literature Prize—will be announced on Thursday.
Alfred Nobel, a chemist himself, accumulated his fortune from inventing dynamite in the 19th century, laying the foundation for the Nobel Prizes. Last year’s Chemistry Prize was awarded to American scientists David Baker and John Jumper, along with British Demis Hassabis, to recognize their work in decoding and creating new protein structures.