Overview

• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences named Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi the 2025 laureates in Stockholm, with 11 million Swedish kronor to be shared.
• The prize recognizes metal–organic frameworks—crystalline networks of metal nodes and organic linkers that create vast internal surface area for molecules to move and be stored.
• According to the committee’s historical account, Robson pioneered porous frameworks in 1989, Kitagawa showed gas uptake and flexibility in the early 1990s, and Yaghi later built stable, tunable structures using rational design.
• Cited uses include harvesting water from desert air, capturing carbon dioxide, storing or separating gases, catalysis, and removing PFAS and other contaminants from water.
• The laureates are affiliated with Kyoto University, the University of Melbourne, and the University of California, Berkeley, and the field has since yielded tens of thousands of MOFs with growing industrial pilots such as hydrogen storage, toxic gas handling in chipmaking, and carbon capture.