Nobel prize in chemistry awarded to scientists for work on ‘Hermione’s handbag’ | Nobel prizes
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists who have created revolutionary porous materials that can harvest desert air water, capture carbon dioxide from industrial installations and eliminate water toxins.
Susumu Kitagawa, from the University of Kyoto, Richard Robson, of Melbourne University, and Omar Yaghi, from the University of California in Berkeley, shared the Swedish Kronor Prize (around £ 871,400 of around £ 871,400.
The trio has found ways to combine metallic ions and organic molecules in highly porous structures through which liquids and gases could flow. Tens of thousands of these materials have since been brought for applications ranging from hydrogen storage to the elimination of chemicals forever water and recovery of rare land metals of waste.
Scientists were honored “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”, or MOFs, which have such potential that they were called the 21st century material.
Speaking during the prize announcement, Professor Heiner Linke, president of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: “They found ways to create materials, entirely of materials with large cavities inside, which can be seen almost as rooms in a hotel, so that guest molecules can enter and also get out of the same materials.
“A small amount of this material can be almost like Hermione’s handbag at Harry Potter. It can store huge amounts of gas in a small volume.”
Research began in 1989 with Robson, a chemist born in Glusburn, West Yorkshire, who moved to Australia after studying in the universities of Oxford and Stanford. Inspired by the structure of diamonds, he combined copper ions with a four -arms molecule to make molecules in the shape of a pyramid. These have linked to form crystals scattered with cavities.
Robson achieved the potential of the structures, but they were unstable and tended to collapse. It took more work by Kitagawa and Yaghi to transform metal-organic frames into precious materials than they are today.
Kitagawa has shown that similar structures based on cobalt, nickel and zinc were not only stable but could be used to store and release methane, nitrogen and oxygen. He then showed that MOFs could be adapted to different tasks and even made from flexible materials.
Reached by the Nobel Committee, Kitagawa said it was “deeply honored and delighted” to receive the prize. Asked about his hopes for the future, Kitagawa said he wanted to use MOF to extract important elements such as carbon and oxygen from air and with green energy transforms them into useful materials. “It’s my dream,” he said.
Yaghi became fascinated by chemistry at the age of 10 after having fake in the school’s library, which was generally locked, and by randomly corded from the shelves. He was raised with his brothers and sisters in a single room in Amman, Jordan, without running water or electricity. On the insistence of his father, he went to study in the United States.
Frustrated by the traditional way of building new molecular structures, Yaghi has developed a more precise approach that more likely looked like LEGO pieces in large crystals. In the 1990s, he revealed MOF that looked like nets held with copper or cobalt. Later, he created an extraordinary MOF based on zinc. Some grams held an area as large as a football field, which means that it could absorb a large amount of gas for its size.
Dr. Becky Greenaway, chemist at Imperial College in London, said: “Many chemists wondered when metal-organic frameworks would get the Nobel Prize, and it finally happened.
“Their discovery has enabled a full range of applications, gas storage and separations to the administration of drugs, and has also opened other areas, including porous liquids – liquids with holes – which are promising in the capture and catalysis of carbon.”
