Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on molecular architecture

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry of 2025 went to Susum KitagavaIN Richard Robson And Omar Yagi To develop materials full of cavities that can store and release gases, such as carbon dioxide, known as metal frames.

“A small amount of such material may almost look like a Hermione handbag in Harry Potter– said Heiner Linka, chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry. “He can store a huge amount of gas in a tiny volume.”

Tens of thousands of different metal -organizational frames have already been created. They have many potential applications, from assistance in capture CO₂ in a chimney for cleaning Forever chemicals And Collection of water from the air.

In the late 1980s, Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne in Australia was inspired by the ordered structure of diamonds to create the first metal frames. Robson realized that it could be possible to use metal ions as nodes, and tie them along with carbon or organic molecules.

When metal ions and organic molecules are mixed together, they independently gather in an ordered framework. While the cavities within Diamond are small, the cavities in the metal framework can be much larger.

Strips in the metal -organic framework created by Robson were filled with water. It was the Susum of Kitagawa at the Kyoto University in Japan, which first created a frame that was stable enough to be dried, and who managed to fill the empty cavities with gas.

“He showed that gases can be taken, absorbed in material, and can also be freed from the material,” said Olof Ramstrem, a member of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry.

Kitagawa also continued to create a metal -organic framework that change the shape when adding or removing gases.

Omar Yagi from the University of California in Berkeley managed to create frames that were even more stable using metal ion clusters containing zinc and oxygen, and linkers containing carboxylate groups.

“This is an amazing structure because it was very stable. He was stable up to 300 degrees Celsius, ”said Ramstrem. “But even more noteworthy was that it contains a huge surface area. Thus, only a few grams of this porous material, approximately the same as a small sugar cube, contains as many surface areas as a large football step, which is several thousand square meters. ”

Yagi also continued to show that the cavities in these materials can be increased, simply making linkers longer.

According to Ramster, after these fundamental breakthroughs, the fields developed very quickly. “We see how new metal -organic frames develop almost every day.”