Category: Chemistry

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The Chemistry of Everyday Life: Simple Reactions All Around Us

This piece of fabric is coated with the new non-stick material made via the nanoscale fletching technique. The droplets being repelled are all low surface tension oils: from left to right: hexadecane, tetradecane, dodecane and decane. Credit: Samuel Au / University of Toronto Engineering

Scientists Unveil a Nonstick Miracle That Could End the Era of Forever Chemicals

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7 Incredible Properties of Water You Didn’t Know

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From Atoms to Elements: The Fundamental Building Blocks of Everything

Curved anthracene derivatives with bulky substituents to undergo efficient, reversible Dewar isomerization upon absorbing visible light. Credit: Chem (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2025.102660

This Liquid Carbon Stores Sunlight and Releases Heat on Demand

Researchers have developed a proof-of-concept device capable of detecting a biomarker implicated in endometriosis with unprecedented sensitivity from menstrual blood. The device is similar to a pregnancy test, showing two lines if the biomarker is detected in the sample. Credit: Dipanjan Pan / Penn State

This Simple Test Could End Years of Suffering for Millions with Endometriosis

From seaweed to structural material: A seaweed called Ulva (righthand petri dish) is dried (center), powdered (left) and then mixed directly in with traditional cement (beaker). The darker cement cube (top center) contains 5% seaweed by weight. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

The Secret Ingredient from the Ocean That Could Fix Cement’s Dirty Problem

Although occupation of dodecahedral cages by TBAB had not been previously reported, it was found that utilizing dodecahedral cages allows for higher packing density of TBAB. Credit: Yokohama National University

The Crystal That Hid Its Secret for 80 Years

Establishing an abiotic phospholipid metabolic network. Credit: Nature Chemistry (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-01829-5

What If We Could Watch Life Begin All Over Again

Synthesis and electrochemical CO2RR performance of Cu/CP hybrid catalysts. Credit: Advanced Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202501021

Scientists Turn Carbon Emissions into Clean Fuel with Breakthrough Copper Catalyst

Molecular structure of the new 20-electron ferrocene derivative, highlighting nitrogen (blue), iron (orange), hydrogen (green), and carbon (grey) atoms. Credit: Modified from Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61343-7

Breaking the 18-Electron Rule to Unlock New Frontiers in Chemistry

Rice University researchers and collaborators have developed a new coating for glass could help reduce energy bills, especially during the cold season, by preventing heat-loss from leaky windows. Credit: Jorge Vidal / Rice University

New Glass Coating Could Slash Your Heating Bills This Winter

The electrolyser used as part of the new method to make 'green ammonia'.Credit. PJ Cullen

Scientists Create Lightning in a Box to Revolutionize Fertilizer and Fuel

The catalyst consists of single platinum atoms (red) surrounded by nitrogen (blue) and carbon atoms (gray). Using nuclear magnetic resonance, such atomic environments can now be precisely studied for the first time. Credit: Javier Pérez-Ramírez / ETH Zürich

Scientists Unlock the Secret Lives of Single Platinum Atoms

Pangenome analysis of Pseudomonas syringae strains (center) has made it possible to find new compounds (outside). Credit: Lu Yuo, Leibniz-HKI

The Plant-Killing Bacterium That Could Help Cure Disease

Under cryogenic conditions, a team from SLAC and LLNL used X-rays to trigger decomposition and measure the structure of high explosive molecules. Credit: Dan Herchek

Scientists Capture Hidden Chemistry Behind Explosions Using X-Ray Vision

Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology

New Oxidation State Found in Lanthanide After 130 Years of Mystery

Credit: Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2025). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202503003

Turning Air Into Plastic May Soon Be Possible Thanks to This New Chemistry

A sample of Aspergillus flavus cultured in the Gao Lab. Credit: Bella Ciervo

Deadly Tomb Fungus Transformed into a Potent Cancer Fighter

Scientists successfully synthesize neutral hexanitrogen (N6). Credit: Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09032-9

Scientists Create Explosive New Form of Nitrogen That Could Power the Future

Composite image of wheat field with bright blue sky.

Scientists Turn Wheat and Oat Leftovers into Sustainable Clothing

Credit: HFML-FELIX

Scientists Capture the Invisible Moment When Molecules Transform

A graphic showing how ligands (circled) attached to the metallic (green sphere) center of a catalyst drive the selective conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) to formate (HCO2-). This ligand-based reaction maximizes the yield of this industrially important product by preventing unwanted side reactions. Credit: Andressa Müller/Brookhaven National Laboratory

Scientists Harness Light to Turn Carbon Dioxide into Valuable Fuel

Credit: Langmuir (2025). DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c00679

New Hydrogel Cleans Polluted Water and Recycles Phosphorus on the Cheap

The toothbrush-shaped ultrasound transducer (left image) features a small head size (right image), allowing easy access to premolars and molars in the back of the mouth. Credit: Adapted from ACS Sensors 2025, DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.5c00521

Goodbye to Painful Probing as Ultrasound Device Transforms Dental Checkups

SEM (gray) and EDS mapping (iron (red), selenium (blue), silicon (blue), and nitrogen (yellow)) of poly-SeOxF (a) and poly-MeOxF (b). Credit: Journal of the American Chemical Society (2025). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c01571

New Polymer Technology Brings Precision and Sustainability to Drug Manufacturing

A crystal of carmine seen by transmission electron microscopy, and its crystal structure. Credit: Erik Svensson Grape

Scientists Unlock the Hidden Nanostructure of Carmine Pigment

Synthesis reaction of Calcium superhydride under high pressure reproduced by the machine learning model. Here, the surface of calcium hydride (CaH2) melts to absorb hydrogen molecules, then ordered calcium superhydride (CaH4) is formed after the hydrogen absorption. Credit: R. Sato et al

Machine Learning Cracks the High-Pressure Mystery of Superhydrides

Photochemical reaction setup with green light. Credit: Chenyu Lin

Life Without Life: Scientists Build Self-Reproducing Synthetic Cells Without Biochemistry

Test tubes containing the new silicone copolymers, separated by chain length, from long to short provide visual evidence of the varying band gap in the new semiconductor silicone. Shining a UV light creates a rainbow of beakers as the longer chain lengths shift towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, requiring less energy to absorb and emit light at lower energies. Credit: Zijing (Jackie) Zhang

Scientists Discover Silicone That Can Conduct Electricity and Glow in Color