The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M Yaghi for their work on metal-organic frameworks.The three scientists’ work could tackle some of the biggest problems on our planet, including capturing carbon dioxide to help tackle climate change and reducing plastic pollution using chemistry.”I’m deeply honoured and delighted, thank you very much,” said Professor Kitagawa on the phone to a press conference after he was told the news.”How long do I have to stay here? Because I have to go out for a meeting,” he added.Professor Kitagawa works at Kyoto University in Japan, Professor Richard Robson is at University of Melbourne, Australia, and Professor Omar M Yaghi is at the University of California, US. The three winners will share prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (£872,000).The scientists’ work is about how molecules can be built together into structures – or metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The Nobel committee called it “molecular architecture”.The men worked out how to build constructions with large spaces between the molecules, through which gases and other chemicals can flow. These “rooms” can be used to capture and store chemicals that humans want to get rid of, including carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or so-called forever chemicals, also known as PFAS.The scientists began working independently on the structures in the 1970s and 1980s. Prof Robson asked his university to drill holes into the lab worktops so that wooden balls – representing atoms – could be attached to wooden rods, representing chemical bonds.So far MOFs have only been used on a sm …
