Stuart Batten

We measured the percentage of drivers who waved us while driving across a desert, and extrapolated some findings about vehicle choice and personal fulfilment.

PDF: www.immaterialscience.org/2025/fingering

Just dropped!

A virtual collection from #AustJChem celebrating Nobel Laureate Professor Richard Robson, pioneer of MOFs.

Explore 60 years of his groundbreaking work, free to read until 27 Feb 2026. @csiropublishing.bsky.social @unimelb.bsky.social

connectsci.au/ch/collectio...

What makes a scientific breakthrough truly chemical? Why MOFs are a great choice for the Nobel prize in chemistry

MOFs have been celebrated as a suitably chemical discovery to win the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry. But what makes a scientific breakthrough truly chemical?

Feels like I haven't seen a success rate like that in years. Well done everyone.

4 people standing. Three have certificates

Table full of food

Classroom full of people

Third and final day! Refinements, cifs and lots of delicious food 🍰Congratulations to the brilliant flash talks winners! Now time to sleep 😴

I have no idea why, but I find that genuinely hilarious. I guess they're so tied together in my mind. Brilliant.

Before Richard Robson created the field of MOFs, he created what are now known as "Robson macrocycles", probably the first binucleating and tetranucleating (terms he invented) macrocycles. To create one field of chemistry is amazing, but to create two new kinds of chemistry across a career....

Crystalline futures: how a Monash Science researcher shaped the Nobel Prize landscape For Professor Stuart Batten, from the Monash University School of Chemistry who heads the Batten Research Group, greatness came in the form of molecular scaffolds, metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, t...

www.monash.edu/science/news...

How the pioneers of metal-organic frameworks won the Nobel prize From wooden models to thousands and thousands of structures, Julia Robinson tells the story of how Richard Robson, Susumu Kitagawa and Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry

Julia Robinson spoke to Stuart Batten – Richard Robson's first PhD student to work on coordination polymers – and also had the pleasure of discussing the award-winning work behind this year's Nobel prize with none other than Nobel laureate Susumu Kitagawa.

A proud moment for Australian science!

We were honoured to celebrate Prof Robson’s remarkable achievements in our 2019 Special Collection, and are thrilled to see him now recognised with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry! #AustJChem

Which you can revisit here:
www.publish.csiro.au/CH/issue/9431

Group of people standing outside near a barbeque

Classroom full of people with lecturer at the front

Workshop day 2: splitting into protein and chemical crystallography streams, beamline practicals and beautiful weather for a bbq 🌞 Also 40 absolutely brilliant flash talks in 40 min- astounded by all the amazing science people are doing! 💎👩‍🔬🧪

Happy to share this little tutorial review:

pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

#crystals #flexible #chemistry

Ultimately, MOFs part of a wider field known as ‘crystal engineering’, so yeah.

#BraggYourPattern

Interpenetrated dodecahedrons made out of lolly cubes and toothpicks

Stuart Battern standing in front of slide with 2025 Chemistry Nobel Prize winners on it in lecture theatre

Day one of our 2025 Crystallography Workshop! Featuring a special pop-up talk from @sbattenresearch.bsky.social about this year's chemistry Nobel Prize, and outreach training where everyone could make their own lolly crystal structure 🍭💎 @crystallised-cricket.com #BraggYourPattern #OzChem

Oh, very consciously. My reaction was entirely “Well this stuff’s not going to give me a single crystal, which was the point of the experiment. It just means I’m going have to put more reactions on now.” ‘Flowers’ of crystals are always frustrating that way. Derek’s crystal, on the other hand… Wow!

I got in trouble on Twitter a while ago because I didn’t find some flawed clusters of crystals that looked like flowers particularly pretty because, well, all I saw were flawed clusters of crystals.

Now THIS is pretty…

Richard would always pop into the lab to see how our reactions were going. He’d take anything that was promising across to the door to the sunlight to peer at it with a hand lens, followed by “I think you’ve got useable crystals there, Stuart”.

I think you’ve got useable crystals there, Derek.

😍

Bright green transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with copper and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed blocky roughly rectangular pieces with some very large emerald-like chunks.

Pink/red transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed as a mixture of long rectangular types and aggregated chunks.

Purple transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed long slightly blocky needles.

Clear transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with zirconium and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed chunky hexagons.

I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun in the lab than when I was making MOFs myself (and trying to use them for small-molecule X-ray structure determination). So let me celebrate by posting a few of the MOF crystals I prepared:

I wasn't planning on going, but I'm seriously reconsidering that now, given the recent events. Might be a bit of a buzz about the place.

Oh, I just realised that I've actually published with two of the three 2025 Nobel Prize winners. How did this not occur to me before? Should I try for the complete set?

I flippin' love that they chose a picture of arrow pushing

#chemsky 🧪⚗️

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Thankfully it wasn't a wider shot, showing only 4 students in the tute. On the day after your tutor won a Nobel Prize! Sheesh.

To me the conceptual leap represented by the design principles to make these deliberately, reliably and controllably are as important a component of the Prize worthiness as the actual materials. A strategy for controlling how the component atoms and molecules assemble into a solid was revolutionary.

Fascinating - I need to have a closer look at that when I have some time. Of course, the very first artificial coordination compound was a coordination polymer - Prussian Blue, discovered accidentally in 1706 (I think). Though the 'organic' bit of 'MOF' doesn't quite work.

I must have missed this one. Very, very cool stuff (as MORFs are in general).

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Say what? Lol. Thanks - that gives me a bit of a smile for the end of the week.