Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks, porous molecular structures with potential uses ranging from capturing carbon dioxide to removing persistent pollutants. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award in Stockholm.
The three researchers will share 11 million Swedish kronor, reported as about £872,000. Kitagawa works at Kyoto University in Japan, Robson at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and Yaghi at the University of California in the United States. Their research, conducted independently over decades, established ways to assemble molecules into stable, open frameworks.
The Nobel committee described the field as molecular architecture. In these materials, metal ions and organic molecules form structures containing large internal spaces. Gases and other chemicals can move through those spaces, allowing a framework to capture, store, separate or react with selected substances. The design can be varied to alter pore size and chemical behaviour.
Potential applications include trapping carbon dioxide from power stations and factories, collecting PFAS chemicals often called forever chemicals, and breaking down harmful gases. The published report also cited possible use against gases associated with nuclear weapons. Companies are testing whether useful frameworks can be manufactured at scale, but present deployment remains limited.
Robson urged caution about expansive environmental claims. He said suggestions that the compounds could solve atmospheric carbon-dioxide problems were unrealistic, though they might perform that type of task on a smaller scale. His warning separates the scientific versatility recognised by the prize from the engineering, cost and scale challenges of turning laboratory materials into global infrastructure.
The work's origins stretch back to the 1970s and 1980s. Robson used wooden balls and rods to model atoms and chemical bonds, even having holes drilled into laboratory benches for the physical structures. Kitagawa's research was associated by the Nobel committee with the idea that work lacking an obvious immediate use can later become valuable. Yaghi, raised in Amman, Jordan, became interested in molecular structures at school and moved to the United States to study at 15.
The chemistry award followed the week's prizes in medicine and physics. Its focus was not a single commercial product but a general method for creating materials with controllable interior space. Metal-organic frameworks offer a platform on which many specific applications might be built; the Nobel recognised the conceptual and experimental foundations, while practical effectiveness must still be demonstrated separately for each proposed use. That distinction explains why a mature scientific field can receive the Nobel while many of its most ambitious applications remain experimental.
