The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi for their work on metal organic frameworks (MOF).
The three winners will share prize money of SK11m (£872,000).
The laureates developed MOFs, a new type of molecular architecture which contain large cavities in which molecules can flow in and out.
The prize was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Professor Kitagawa works at Kyoto University, Professor Richard Robson is at the University of Melbourne and Professor M. Yaghi is based at the University of California.
Researchers have used them to harvest water from desert air, extract pollutants from water, capture carbon dioxide and store hydrogen.
What makes MOFs special is they can be chemically tuned to suit specific applications, for example adsorption of target molecules and storage, catalysis, sensing applications and drug delivery.
It is a evolving industry that is reshaping some industrial gases markets.