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Category: chemistry – Page 3

Astronomers find nearby planets to be small, strange, and utterly uninhabitable

Scientists have painted the most detailed portrait yet of the planetary system orbiting Barnard’s Star—the sun’s closest neighbor after Alpha Centauri, just under six light-years from Earth.

Discovered in 2025, the four planets orbiting Barnard’s Star are all smaller than Earth and Venus but larger than Mars—a type of planet not found anywhere in our own solar system.

By analyzing the chemical makeup of the star, the researchers from the University of Cambridge found that its planets are rich in a rare mineral called periclase, which on Earth is found only hundreds of kilometers (hundreds of miles) below the surface.

Scientists May Have Found a Way to Extend Fertility in Mice

As ovaries age, their supporting tissue becomes stiffer, and slowing that process may be key to extending fertility.

The space between cells isn’t just an empty void: it’s more like a jelly bath, rich with proteins and other molecules that support the cells suspended within.

It’s also the medium through which important chemical and mechanical signals are transmitted between cells.

Optically detected and radio wave-controlled spin chemistry in flavoproteins

An incredible paper by Meng et al. showing how the fluorescence of the flavoproteins iLOV and cryptochrome can be modulated by RF signals when held under certain magnetic fields. This work may provide a foundation for more RF tools which allow manipulation of biological processes.

Radio waves are shown to modulate fluorescence and associate spin chemistry in proteins.

Plant-based wound dressing fights infection before it takes hold

A new dressing made from plant-based materials can deliver antibiotics directly to wounds during critical early stages of infection, according to researchers from the University of Bath. The study, published in Bioactive Materials, is the first to use this family of sustainable furan-based polymers, previously explored for sustainable plastics and packaging, for infection-fighting wound dressings.

Wound infections are a major challenge for health care systems worldwide and are estimated to cost the NHS alone billions every year. Bacteria can enter a wound and begin forming a protective, slimy layer known as a biofilm within hours, slowing healing and making infections much harder to treat.

The team from the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Chemistry created a novel, two-sided dressing from sustainable polymers, plastic-like materials sourced from plants rather than petrochemicals. One side of the dressing rapidly releases antibiotics into the wound, while the other acts as a barrier to maintain the protected healing environment.

Immune cells get transformed into fungus-fighting nanoparticles

Tiny particles made from the membranes of human immune cells could offer a promising new way to fight fungal infections that are becoming harder to treat. Engineers at the University of California San Diego created antifungal nanoparticles that target Candida albicans, a fungus responsible for oral and vaginal yeast infections as well as life-threatening bloodstream infections. In mice with severe Candida infections, the nanoparticles greatly reduced the amount of fungus in major organs and significantly improved survival.

The research, published in Cell Biomaterials, was led by Liangfang Zhang, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, who also holds the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Innovations for Engineering in Medicine.

Secure glass containers for storing chemical waste through laser welding

As the adoption of electric vehicles continues to grow, so does the need for the safe and permanent storage of battery materials and industrial chemical waste. Certain waste streams require disposal in what are known as Category IV landfills, which impose particularly stringent requirements on storage containers. These must simultaneously ensure environmental protection, safe handling and long-term structural integrity.

Glass is a highly promising material for this application: It is exceptionally chemically inert—meaning it reacts with virtually no other substances—making thick-walled glass containers especially well-suited for the permanent containment of hazardous materials. Glass containers are also of particular interest in the context of potential new recycling methods in the future. The stored residual materials do not react with the containers and can be readily recovered from them.

Until now, these glass containers have been manufactured primarily using thermal gas processes. However, these are limited by uncontrolled heat input, high residual stresses and restricted automation potential. Laser welding, on the other hand, enables high processing speeds and shows excellent potential for automation.

AI-powered electronic nose can distinguish tens of thousands of odors

A research team has presented a roadmap for developing an “artificial olfactory system” that detects odors like the human nose and analyzes them using artificial intelligence (AI) by leveraging metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The team systematically organized and reviewed key research trends in electronic nose technology, from MOF material design to sensor implementation and AI-based odor pattern recognition. The research was led by Hyuk-Jun Kwon’s in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology. The work is published in the journal Progress in Materials Science.

An artificial olfactory system, or “electronic nose (e-nose),” is a technology in which AI learns and analyzes signal patterns generated when multiple sensors respond to odor molecules. Although it has broad potential applications in areas such as food safety, environmental pollution monitoring, hazardous gas detection and disease diagnosis, conventional sensor materials have faced limitations in selectivity, response speed and operating conditions.

The research team focused on MOFs as a key material for overcoming these limitations. MOFs are porous materials formed by combining metal ions and organic compounds, and they can effectively adsorb odor molecules through their microscopic pores. Moreover, because their structures and chemical properties can be tailored for specific purposes, they are regarded as next-generation sensor materials capable of sensitively detecting various odors even under room-temperature, low-power operating conditions.

Atoms tell different stories when light hits a molecule in trillionths of a second

Researchers have captured how a molecule redistributes energy after absorbing light, differentiating the roles of individual atoms in the process. They used X-ray flashes from the European XFEL to show that different atoms in the same molecule can reveal different aspects of the process. The study provides evidence that excitation by light can enhance an atom’s sensitivity to the motion of nearby atoms. The new method for following ultrafast chemical reactions at the atomic scale, in real time, can help researchers understand photostability in DNA, energy flow in light-harvesting materials and other fundamental processes driven by light.

The team investigated 3-fluoropyridine, a small ring-shaped molecule. When the molecule absorbs light, such as a short pulse from an ultraviolet laser, it is promoted into an electronically excited state and rapidly distorts out of its original planar shape. It then passes through a so-called conical intersection: a short-lived but crucial crossing point where movements of electrons and the atoms’ cores become strongly coupled.

After this point, the molecule returns to the ground state. At that moment, electronic energy is converted into vibrations. The researchers found that this conversion leaves distinct fingerprints at different atomic sites: the fluorine atom acts as a clean marker of vibrational relaxation, while the nitrogen atom, which is more directly involved in the excitation, reflects an intertwined response of electron redistribution and structural motion.

Metals’ atomic arrangement can create ‘corrosion highways’ in nuclear reactors

Nuclear reactors are traditionally powered with dense fuel rods that can produce about 1 gigawatt of carbon-free electricity, enough to power about 100,000,000 lightbulbs. Newer power plant designs using molten salt for cooling instead of the water found in traditional reactors could offer better efficiency and stability, but they face a problem—the extreme chemical environment created by the molten salt can corrode the metal comprising the reactor.

A team led by engineers at Penn State found that adjusting the subtle atomic arrangement of structural metals can significantly affect the rate and extent of this corrosion, even with identical baseline chemical compositions. They did this by creating a series of reactive simulations to isolate and study this corrosion mechanism. Their findings are available online ahead of publication in the August issue of Corrosion Science.

Battery-like device pulls CO₂ from air using electricity and saltwater chemistry

Engineers have developed a new way to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere using a process similar to charging and discharging a battery—an advance that could help address the planet’s excess CO2 problem.

A new collaborative study between scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Toyota focuses on direct air capture, a technology designed to reduce new emissions and remove CO2 that has already accumulated in the atmosphere. Instead of using heat to absorb and release CO2, as many carbon capture methods do, the new method uses electricity and water-based chemistry within an electrochemical device.

The results of the study by mechanical engineering and science professor Kyle Smith, Illinois graduate students Paul Rozzi and JeongA Lee, and Chip Roberts and Tim Arthur from the Toyota Research Institute of North America are published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

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