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| Open AccessOperando probing of the surface chemistry during the Haber–Bosch process
Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, the surface composition of iron and ruthenium catalysts during ammonia synthesis at pressures up to 1 bar and temperatures as high as 723 K can be revealed.
- Christopher M. Goodwin
- , Patrick Lömker
- & Anders Nilsson
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Article
| Open AccessCapturing the generation and structural transformations of molecular ions
The use of mega-electronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction combined with resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization yields data that can reveal the formation and subsequent structural relaxation of a molecular ion on an ultrafast timescale.
- Jun Heo
- , Doyeong Kim
- & Hyotcherl Ihee
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Correspondence |
Climate policy must integrate blue energy with food security
- Yuyan Gong
- , Liuyue He
- & Jiangning Zeng
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: A new kind of solar cell is coming — is it the future of green energy?
Perovskite–silicon ‘tandem’ photovoltaic panels could lead to cheaper electricity production.
- Mark Peplow
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Research Briefing |
Atomic electron tomography reveals chemical order in medium- and high-entropy alloys
Medium- and high-entropy alloys are hugely promising materials in metallurgy and catalysis, but their atomic-scale structure — and how that relates to their properties — is not well understood. A powerful method is beginning to reveal their secrets, with hopes for engineering better materials in the future.
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News |
This GPT-powered robot chemist designs reactions and makes drugs — on its own
A system called Coscientist scours the Internet for instructions, then designs and executes experiments to synthesize molecules.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News & Views |
Large language models direct automated chemistry laboratory
Automation of chemistry research has focused on developing robots to execute jobs. Artificial-intelligence technology has now been used not only to control robots, but also to plan their tasks on the basis of simple human prompts.
- Ana Laura Dias
- & Tiago Rodrigues
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Article
| Open AccessAutonomous chemical research with large language models
Coscientist is an artificial intelligence system driven by GPT-4 that autonomously designs, plans and performs experiments by incorporating large language models empowered by tools such as internet and documentation search, code execution and experimental automation.
- Daniil A. Boiko
- , Robert MacKnight
- & Gabe Gomes
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Article |
A light-driven enzymatic enantioselective radical acylation
Enzyme-bound ketyl radicals derived from thiamine diphosphate are selectively generated through single-electron oxidation by a photoexcited organic dye and shown to lead to enantioselective radical acylation reactions.
- Yuanyuan Xu
- , Hongwei Chen
- & Xiaoqiang Huang
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Article
| Open AccessDesigner phospholipid capping ligands for soft metal halide nanocrystals
Phospholipids enhance the structural and colloidal integrity of hybrid organic–inorganic lead halide perovskites and lead-free metal halide nanocrystals, which then exhibit enhanced robustness and optical properties.
- Viktoriia Morad
- , Andriy Stelmakh
- & Maksym V. Kovalenko
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Research Briefing |
Oceans can capture more carbon dioxide than previously thought
The strength of the biological carbon pump was estimated using direct measurements of nutrients collected over decades. The findings indicate that ocean waters can capture and store larger amounts of carbon dioxide than previously estimated. This might have implications for climate-change models.
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News |
US nuclear-fusion lab enters new era: achieving ‘ignition’ over and over
Researchers at the National Ignition Facility are consistently creating reactions that make more energy than they consume.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Outlook |
How to take ‘forever’ out of forever chemicals
Stubborn compounds called PFAS in drinking water put health at risk. Technologies based on plasmas, pressure, sound or fungus could finally degrade these chemicals.
- Neil Savage
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Outlook |
Sizing up hydrogen’s hydrological footprint
The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is essential to decarbonizing economies. Industrial policies and technology developments could trim the water consumption involved in producing the gas, minimizing its cost and environmental impact.
- Peter Fairley
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Outlook |
Fresh water from thin air
Strategies for collecting water from the atmosphere using minimal energy could fill a crucial gap in sustaining communities that have limited access to water.
- Michael Eisenstein
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News Feature |
Nature’s 10: ten people (and one non-human) who helped shape science in 2023
An AI pioneer, an architect of India’s Moon mission and the world’s first global heat officer are some of the people behind this year’s big stories.
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Nature Video |
The rubber that stops cracks in their tracks
Highly entangled polymers allow it to resist cracks from cyclical stress 10 times better than before.
- Dan Fox
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Spotlight |
Renewable energy for the subcontinent
India has invested heavily in wind, solar and storage technology to hit net zero by 2070, but some don’t think it’s doing enough.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Spotlight |
The climate disaster strikes: what the data say
A series of impact assessments highlight India’s vulnerability to extreme weather events and the risks they pose to human health.
- Shannon Hall
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Research Briefing |
Polymer films inspired by spider silk connect biological tissues and electronic devices
Linking biological tissues with electronic devices is challenging owing to the softness of tissues and their arbitrary shapes and sizes. An innovative water-responsive, supercontractile polymer film, inspired by spider silk, allows the construction of soft, stretchable and shape-adaptive tissue–electronic interfaces.
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News |
COP28 climate summit signals the end of fossil fuels — but is it enough?
As nations make historic pledge to ‘transition’ energy systems away from fossil fuels — some scientists are disappointed by the softened wording.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News Feature |
Nuclear-fusion breakthrough: this physicist helped to achieve the first-ever energy gain
Annie Kritcher and her team at the US National Ignition Facility designed fusion experiments that generated more energy than they consumed.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Nature Podcast |
Cat parasite Toxoplasma tricked to grow in a dish
Cat-only life-cycle stage cultured in vitro, and the mysterious giant proteins that might turn bacteria into killers.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Water-responsive supercontractile polymer films for bioelectronic interfaces
Water-responsive supercontractile polymer films composed of poly(ethylene oxide) and poly(ethylene glycol)-α-cyclodextrin inclusion complex contract by more than 50% of their original length within seconds after wetting and become soft and stretchable hydrogel thin films that can be used in bioelectronic interfaces.
- Junqi Yi
- , Guijin Zou
- & Xiaodong Chen
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News |
Robot chemist sparks row with claim it created new materials
Researchers question whether an AI-controlled lab assistant actually made any novel substances.
- Mark Peplow
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Research Highlight |
Powerful X-ray reveals the inner life of an electric-vehicle battery
Researchers get an unprecedented glimpse of how ions behave during a drive.
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News |
India and climate: what does the world’s most populous nation want from COP28?
India wants to be the voice of the global south at the climate conference. It is also massively dependent on coal.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Article
| Open AccessSingle-molecule electron spin resonance by means of atomic force microscopy
By using a pump–probe atomic force microscopy detection scheme, electron spin transitions between non-equilibrium triplet states of individual pentacene molecules, as well as the ability to manipulate electron spins over tens of microseconds, is demonstrated.
- Lisanne Sellies
- , Raffael Spachtholz
- & Jascha Repp
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News |
First cash pledged for countries devastated by climate change: COP28 starts with historic decision
Draft resolution on a ‘loss and damage fund’ has attracted more than $400 million, but climate-vulnerable countries say more cash is needed.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News & Views |
Carbon rings push limits of chemical theories
Scientists are tantalized by the many forms that carbon could adopt — some of which are predicted to have extraordinary properties. The synthesis of three new all-carbon molecules is therefore a source of excitement.
- Przemysław Gaweł
- & Cina Foroutan-Nejad
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News Feature |
A new kind of solar cell is coming: is it the future of green energy?
Firms commercializing perovskite–silicon ‘tandem’ photovoltaics say that the panels will be more efficient and could lead to cheaper electricity.
- Mark Peplow
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News |
Google AI and robots join forces to build new materials
Tool from Google DeepMind predicts nearly 400,000 stable substances, and an autonomous system learns to make them in the lab.
- Mark Peplow
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Article |
On-surface synthesis of aromatic cyclo[10]carbon and cyclo[14]carbon
We provide a modified strategy for the on-surface synthesis of cyclocarbons with 10 or 14 carbon atoms that provides a route for characterizing annular carbon allotropes.
- Luye Sun
- , Wei Zheng
- & Wei Xu
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Article
| Open AccessAssociative pyridinium electrolytes for air-tolerant redox flow batteries
The redox behaviour of pyridinium electrolytes under representative flow battery conditions is investigated, offering insights into air tolerance of batteries containing these electrolytes while providing a universal physico-chemical descriptor of their reversibility.
- Mark E. Carrington
- , Kamil Sokołowski
- & Oren A. Scherman
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Article
| Open AccessPesticide use negatively affects bumble bees across European landscapes
Results from 316 Bombus terrestris colonies at 106 agricultural sites across eight European countries find pesticides in bumble bee pollen to be associated with reduced colony performance, especially in areas of intensive agriculture.
- Charlie C. Nicholson
- , Jessica Knapp
- & Maj Rundlöf
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News & Views |
From the archive: renaming the proton, and enthusiasm for sanitary matters
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Nature Careers Podcast |
How ChatGPT and sounds from space brought a ‘luminous jelly’ to life
Engineer-turned-artist Diana Scarborough and inorganic chemist Anna Melekhova describe how their art–science collaboration gave voice and form to a new material.
- Julie Gould
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Spotlight |
Réunion’s search for energy self-sufficiency
Whether the French island succeeds in producing all of its electricity depends not only on technology, but also on social and political will.
- Rachel Nuwer
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Nature Index |
Are rooftop solar panels the answer to meeting China’s challenging climate targets?
Research is central to the success of major photovoltaic programmes in ramping up clean energy and alleviating rural poverty.
- Yvaine Ye
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Research Highlight |
How to recycle unrecyclable paper cups
Chemistry can transform disposable cups into industrially useful structures called cellulose nanocrystals.
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Technology Feature |
Microbial miners take on rare-earth metals
As a tech-hungry world gobbles up rare-earth elements, researchers are adapting bacteria that can isolate and purify the metals in the absence of harsh chemicals.
- Amber Dance
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Article |
Computational prediction of complex cationic rearrangement outcomes
Computers equipped with a comprehensive knowledge-base of mechanistic steps augmented by physical-organic chemistry rules, as well as quantum mechanical and kinetic calculations, can use a reaction-network approach to analyse the mechanisms of cationic rearrangements.
- Tomasz Klucznik
- , Leonidas-Dimitrios Syntrivanis
- & Bartosz A. Grzybowski
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World View |
The world’s chemical-weapons stockpiles are gone — but a new challenge looms
Continued efforts to maintain the ban on chemical weapons depend on nations sharing information to further build trust and global safety.
- Peter J. Hotchkiss
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Nature Video |
The robot chemist helping to pave the way to settlements on Mars
An AI-assisted robot, could use Martian rock to autonomously generate oxygen on the red planet
- Noah Baker
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News |
This AI robot chemist could make oxygen on Mars
The system uses Martian materials to produce catalysts that release oxygen from water.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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Research Highlight |
Flashy molecules decode a polymer’s lengthening chain
A fluorescence-imaging method can be used to identify the sequence of molecular building blocks in a polymer.
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