When the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was announced, it honored more than a scientific breakthrough. It celebrated a shift in how chemists imagine and build the materials of the future.
This year’s prize went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi for the development of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), crystals that can capture, store, and transform gases like hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor.
MOFs look like ordinary powders, but under the microscope, they reveal a precise 3D network of metal ions and organic linkers. These tiny frameworks create huge internal surfaces where gases can attach and react. The result: materials that can filter air, store clean energy, and even pull drinking water from dry desert air.
As Prof. Yaghi explained in his Nobel interview, “the deeper you dig, the more beautifully you find things are constructed,” a reflection of how chemistry has evolved into a science of design, where researchers build materials for a purpose rather than finding them by chance.1