Trio win Nobel Prize in Chemistry for new form of molecular architecture

Scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for their work in the development of metal-organic frameworks that dates back to 1989.

The Nobel Committee said that the three laureates “developed a new form of molecular architecture.”

“They have created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow,” the committee said.

Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the chemistry prize in Stockholm. It was the third prize announced this week.

“These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyse chemical reactions,” the committee said in a statement.

Robson, 88, is affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia, Kitagawa, 74, with Japan’s Kyoto University, and Yaghi, 60, with the University of California, Berkeley.

The chemists, working separately but adding to each other’s breakthroughs with research that dates back to 1989, devised ways to make stable metal-organic frameworks – which may be compared to the timber framework of a house.