MOFs and COFs: microporous frameworks with flexible properties

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 to Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University, Japan), Richard Robson (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Omar M. Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley, USA) “for the development of metal–organic frameworks” or in short MOFs.

The presentation gives a basic introduction into the fields of metal-organic and covalent-organic frameworks that are novel classes of materials with exceptionally well controllable properties. Their construction principle is based on linker molecules that are three-dimensionally connected at nodal points which themselves may be contained in larger entities, so called secondary building units. This leads to modular hierarchical arrangements of broad structural and functional variability. Many MOFs and COFs have microporous structures with extremely large internal surface area. Possible applications of these materials are in gas separation, enrichment and storage, for sensing and in catalytic reactions.