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Catalysts unlock pathways for chemical reactions to unfold at faster and more efficient rates, and the development of new catalytic technologies is a critical part of the green energy transition.

The Rice University lab of nanotechnology pioneer Naomi Halas has uncovered a transformative approach to harnessing the catalytic power of aluminum nanoparticles by annealing them in various gas atmospheres at high temperatures.

According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rice researchers and collaborators showed that changing the structure of the oxide layer that coats the particles modifies their catalytic properties, making them a versatile tool that can be tailored to suit the needs of different contexts of use from the production of sustainable fuels to water-based reactions.

A research team has successfully synthesized a metal nanocluster and determined its crystal structure. Their study provides experimental evidence for understanding and designing nanoclusters with specific properties at the atomic level. Metal nanoclusters have wide-ranging applications in the biomedical field.

Their work is published in the journal Polyoxometalates.

Scientists have shown interest in ligand-protected atomically precise metal nanoclusters because they have definite atomic structures and exceptional physical and chemical properties. These properties include attributes such as luminescence, chirality, electrochemistry, and catalysis.

Inspired by the color-changing ability of chameleons, researchers have developed a sustainable technique to 3D-print multiple, dynamic colors from a single ink.

“By designing new chemistries and printing processes, we can modulate structural color on the fly to produce color gradients not possible before,” said Ying Diao, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

The study appears in the journal PNAS.

Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have pioneered a new methodology of fabricating carbon-based quantum materials at the atomic scale by integrating scanning probe microscopy techniques and deep neural networks. This breakthrough highlights the potential of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) at the sub-angstrom scale for enhanced control over atomic manufacturing, benefiting both fundamental research and future applications.

Open-shell magnetic nanographenes represent a technologically appealing class of new carbon-based quantum materials, which host robust π-spin centres and non-trivial collective quantum magnetism. These properties are crucial for developing high-speed electronic devices at the molecular level and creating quantum bits, the building blocks of quantum computers. Despite significant advancements in the synthesis of these materials through on-surface synthesis, a type of solid-phase chemical reaction, achieving precise fabrication and tailoring of the properties of these quantum materials at the atomic level has remained a challenge.

The figure illustrates the chemist-intuited atomic robotic probe that would allow chemists to precisely fabricate organic quantum materials at the single-molecule level. The robotic probe can conduct real-time autonomous single-molecule reactions with chemical bond selectivity, demonstrating the fabrication of quantum materials with a high level of control. (© Nature Synthesis)

Cutting-edge research harnesses butterfly mating behaviors to create a groundbreaking visuochemical integration platform. This bio-inspired hardware, merging visual and chemical data, paves the way for advanced multisensory decision-making in artificial intelligence.

Experiments demonstrate some of the unusual features of molecular reactions that occur in the deep cold of interstellar space.

Many common small molecules are formed in interstellar space, and their low temperatures are expected to have profound effects on their chemical reactions because of quantum-mechanical effects that are masked at higher temperatures. Researchers have now demonstrated some of these cold chemistry phenomena—such as the effects of molecular rotation and collision energy on reaction rates—in a reaction between a hydrogen ion and an ammonia molecule in the lab. The results, while intuitively surprising at first glance, can be explained by a careful theoretical analysis of the quantum chemistry.

Measuring reaction rates at low temperatures is useful for testing quantum-chemical theory because in those conditions molecules may occupy only a few well-defined quantum states. Such experiments could also offer insights into chemical processes in the cold clouds of gas in star-forming regions of interstellar space, where many of the simple molecules that make up solar systems are formed. But low-temperature experiments are difficult, especially for charged atoms and molecules (ions), because they are very sensitive to stray electric fields in the environment, which accelerate and heat up the ions.

A chemical etching method for widening the pores of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) could improve various applications of MOFs, including in fuel cells and as catalysts. Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan and East China Normal University in China developed the new method with collaborators elsewhere in Japan, Australia, and China, and their work was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

MOFs are porous materials composed of metal clusters or ions interconnected by carbon-based (organic) linker groups. Varying the metallic and organic components generates a variety of MOFs suitable for a wide range of applications, including catalysis, chemical separation, and gas storage.

Some MOFs have clear potential for catalyzing the chemical reactions inside fuel cells, which are being explored as the basis of renewable energy systems. Because they don’t use fossil fuels, fuel cells could play a key role in the transition to a low-or zero-emissions economy to combat climate change.

Polaritonic chemistry has ushered in new avenues for controlling molecular dynamics. However, two key questions remain: (i) Can classical light sources elicit the same effects as certain quantum light sources on molecular systems? (ii) Can semiclassical treatments of light–matter interactions capture nontrivial quantum effects observed in molecular dynamics? This work presents a quantum-classical approach addressing issues of realizing cavity chemistry effects without actual cavities. It also highlights the limitations of the standard semiclassical light–matter interaction. It is demonstrated that classical light sources can mimic quantum effects up to the second order of light–matter interaction provided that the mean-field contribution, the symmetrized two-time correlation function, and the linear response function are the same in both situations. Numerical simulations show that the quantum-classical method aligns more closely with exact quantum molecular-only dynamics for quantum light states such as Fock states, superpositions of Fock states, and vacuum squeezed states than does the conventional semiclassical approach.

A team of NUS researchers led by Associate Professor Lu Jiong from the Department of Chemistry and Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, together with their international collaborators, have developed a novel concept of a chemist-intuited atomic robotic probe (CARP).

This innovation, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic the decision-making process of chemists, enables the manufacturing of quantum materials with unrivaled intelligence and precision for future quantum technology applications such as data storage and quantum computing.

Open-shell magnetic nanographene is a type of carbon-based quantum material that possesses key electronic and magnetic properties that are important for developing extremely fast electronic devices at the molecular level, or creating quantum bits, the building blocks of quantum computers. The processes used to develop such materials have progressed over the years due the discovery of a new type of solid-phase chemical reaction known as on-surface synthesis.