Building ordered polymers with metal

Three researchers won the Nobel Prize for developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), structured polymers that use metals as hubs to create precise three-dimensional shapes with controlled internal spaces, unlike traditional tangled polymer chains. Richard Robson built the first MOF using copper in the 1990s, while Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi expanded the technology to create materials that can filter gases, store hydrogen, capture carbon dioxide, and even extract water from desert air.