Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to discovery that could trap C02 and bring
water to deserts
[October 09, 2025]
By KOSTYA MANENKOV, STEFANIE DAZIO and CHRISTINA LARSON
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry
Wednesday for their development of new molecular structures that can
trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially
suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from
desert environments.
The chairperson of the committee that made the award compared the
structures called metal-organic frameworks to the seemingly bottomless
magical handbag carried by Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter”
series. Another example might be Mary Poppins’ enchanted carpet bag.
These containers look small from the outside but are able to hold
surprisingly large quantities within.
The committee said Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi
were honored for “groundbreaking discoveries" that “may contribute to
solving some of humankind’s greatest challenges,” from pollution to
water scarcity.
Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Kitagawa, 74, is with Japan’s Kyoto University, and Yaghi, 60, is with
the University of California, Berkeley.
The work that won the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry
The chemists worked separately but added to each other’s breakthroughs
over decades, beginning with Robson's work in the 1980s.
The scientists were able to devise stable atomic structures that
preserved holes of specific sizes that allowed gas or liquid to flow in
and out. The holes can be customized to match the size of specific
molecules that scientists or engineers want to hold in place, such as
water, carbon dioxide or methane.
“That level of control is quite rare in chemistry,” said Kim Jelfs, a
computational chemist at Imperial College London. “It’s really efficient
for storing gases.”
A relatively small amount of the structure — which combines metal nodes
and organic rods, somewhat like the interchangeable building pieces in
Tinker Toys — creates many organized holes and a huge amount of surface
area inside.
For instance, Jelfs said, a few grams of molecular organic framework may
have as much surface area as a soccer field, all of which can be used to
lock gas molecules in place.
“If you can store toxic gases,” said American Chemical Society President
Dorothy Phillips, “it can help address global challenges.”
Why the work matters
Today researchers around the world are exploring possibilities that
include using the frameworks to remove greenhouse gases from the
atmosphere and pollution from industrial sites. Another possibility is
to use them to harvest moisture from desert air, perhaps to one day
provide clean drinking water in arid environments.
Scientists are also investigating using the structures for targeted drug
delivery. The idea is to load them with medicine that may be slowly
released inside the body.
“It could be a better way to deliver low doses continually,” as with
cancer drugs, said David Pugh, a chemist at King's College London.
The research "could be really, really valuable" in many industries, he
said. But “there are still challenges when you translate that from the
lab to the real world.” For example, many of the structures store the
most gas and liquid in very low-temperature, high-pressure environments,
he said.
Today, metal-organic frameworks are already being used in some
surprising ways, including as part of packing material to keep fruit
fresh over long shipping routes, by gradually releasing chemicals that
slow down the ripening process.
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Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry Heiner Linke makes a
demonstration, next to Secretary General of the Swedish Academy of
Sciences Hans Ellegren, and Member of the Nobel Committee for
Chemistry Olof Ramstrom, right, after they announce Susumu Kitagawa,
Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi, on screen behind, as the recipients
the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the Nobel Assembly of the
Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday, Oct. 8,
2025. (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP)
The winners' reactions
Yaghi learned that he had won while traveling from San Francisco to
Brussels. As he grabbed his luggage and prepared to change flights
in Frankfurt, his phone started buzzing with a call from Sweden.
“You cannot prepare for a moment like that," he said at a news
conference. ”The feeling is indescribable, but it's absolutely
thrilling."
When his phone rang, Kitagawa was at first skeptical. He said he
answered “rather bluntly," thinking it must be a telemarketing call.
“It was such a big prize so I thought, ‘Is it really true?’” he
recalled during a news conference at Kyoto University. “When one of
the experts came on the phone and congratulated me, I finally
thought it was real and felt relaxed.”
Kitagawa said the research has been widely recognized in the world
of chemistry, but “it is very difficult to gain understanding by the
ordinary people, and I’m delighted to be recognized.”
The 88-year-old Robson, in a phone call with The Associated Press
from his home in Melbourne, Australia, said he was “very pleased of
course and a bit stunned as well.”
“This is a major thing that happens late in life when I’m not really
in a condition to withstand it all,” he said. “But here we are.”
Nobel history and other 2025 prizes
The 2024 chemistry prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at
the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and
John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a
British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based
in London.
The three were awarded for discovering powerful techniques to decode
and even design novel proteins, the building blocks of life. Their
work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence,
and held the potential to transform how new drugs and other
materials are made.
The first Nobel of 2025 was announced Monday. The prize in medicine
went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi for
their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
Tuesday's physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and
John M. Martinis for their research on the weird world of subatomic
quantum tunneling that advances the power of everyday digital
communications and computing.
This year's Nobel announcements continue with the literature prize
Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the
economics prize on Monday.
The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the
death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy
Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.
___
Dazio reported from Berlin, and Larson reported from Washington.
Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Rod McGuirk in
Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.
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