UC Berkeley’s Omar Yaghi shares 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to researchers who developed metal-organic frameworks, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today (Oct 8). Chemists Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Richard Robson from Melbourne University, and Omar Yaghi from the University of California, Berkeley, shared the prize.
"Imagine that the tools of chemistry could be used to create entirely new materials with unheard of properties," said Heiner Linke, a solid state physicist at Lund University and Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. "This year's laureates have done just that."
Kitagawa, Robson, and Yaghi synthesized nanometer-sized materials with metal ions and organic linkers to form crystals containing large cavities. Scientists can build such metal-organic frameworks using various building blocks to capture specific substances and impart the materials distinct properties, which can be leveraged in several fields including nanomedicine.
