The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi on Oct. 8, 2025, for the improvement of metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, that are tunable crystal constructions with extraordinarily excessive porosity. These are a category of supplies which have really modified the best way scientists design and take into consideration matter, inspiring progress in varied functions.
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 complete universe of constructions, every like a miniature metropolis of tunnels and rooms ready to be crammed. They’ve been my scientific dwelling since I first stepped into analysis, they usually nonetheless really feel slightly bit like magic to me.
So, what precisely are MOFs?
Steel-organic frameworks are like crystalline scaffolds constructed from two components: 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 stuffed with empty house.
These frameworks are so porous, like sponges with tiny voids, that it’s nearly unimaginable to image them. One gram of a MOF has so many pores that it might probably expose as a lot inner floor space as a soccer subject. It’s astonishing {that a} handful of powder may disguise a complete panorama of floor inside it.
That giant floor space is among the distinctive issues that make MOFs so highly effective, and it comes from the nanoscale pores—tiny molecular rooms that may entice, separate, rework or transport gases, ions and different molecules. In a manner, MOFs are like molecular lodges with numerous doorways, every programmed to confess solely sure company.
Why scientists love them
What fascinates me most about metal-organic frameworks is their limitless design house. Simply by glancing on the periodic desk, each metallic may, in precept, function a cornerstone, and numerous natural molecules can act as bridges connecting them. Even utilizing the identical mixture can produce completely totally different architectures.
Up to now, scientists have synthesized greater than 90,000 MOFs, and computational chemists have predicted a whole lot of 1000’s extra. Few materials households provide this a lot versatility.
I like to think about MOFs as puzzles or Lego units, however on the atomic scale. You may exchange a single piece, or change its colour or form, and find yourself with a cloth that behaves utterly in another way.
Add a brand new “ornament”—what chemists name a practical group—and the framework all of a sudden 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 in nearly each possible form, measurement and texture.
Past their scientific magnificence, MOFs are extremely promising for real-world applied sciences. Completely different constructions and functionalities result in totally different properties and, due to this fact, totally different makes use of.
Some MOFs act as molecular sieves, selectively capturing carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust and even instantly from air. Others clear polluted water by eradicating heavy metals, dyes or “without end chemical substances.”
Sure MOFs can even carry medication or imaging brokers contained in the physique for medical functions. Within the vitality world, they operate as electrodes or electrolytes that make batteries safer and extra environment friendly. And plenty 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 had been fragile curiosities, admired extra for his or her magnificence than their endurance. However that notion has modified dramatically.
Many MOFs are actually 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 group who sadly died in 2017. MIL-125 was not solely secure, 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 is usually a reliable concern, MOFs have grown up. Because of good chemistry, we’ve 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 gentle responsiveness—and, crucially, made main progress in scaling up MOF synthesis for industrial functions.
Scaling is the important thing step in bridging the hole between basic discovery and large-scale deployment. Researchers are 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, entice and rework molecules—is now science reality.
Regardless of these advances, researchers might want to proceed bettering the soundness and scalability of MOFs to completely understand these supplies’ potential in the true world.
A Nobel second that honors creativity
The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry goes past honoring three outstanding scientists—it celebrates a complete group: a technology of chemists and engineers who remodeled a single thought 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 fuel storage and catalysis to vitality 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 are actually Nobel laureates. Again then, MOFs felt like magical sponges, and that sense of surprise 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’ll 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 artistic, we will design and engineer matter with creativeness, and generally vacancy may be the very essence of a cloth.
Offered by The Dialog
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
