Overview

• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2025 Chemistry laureates in Stockholm, with the three scientists sharing 11 million Swedish kronor.
• Metal–organic frameworks are crystalline networks with vast internal surface area that let target molecules move in and out, a capacity the committee likened to Hermione’s “enchanted handbag.”
• The recognized advances span decades: Robson’s 1989 porous crystals, Kitagawa’s early-1990s demonstrations of gas uptake and flexibility, and Yaghi’s highly stable, designable frameworks by the early 2000s.
• Cited applications include harvesting water from desert air, capturing carbon dioxide, separating PFAS and other pollutants from water, storing hydrogen or toxic gases, and catalyzing reactions.
• Researchers have produced tens of thousands of MOFs, and reported uses now extend to industrial gas handling in semiconductor manufacturing and pilot efforts to capture CO2 from industrial sites.