Physical chemistry articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Single-molecule magnets have potential data-storage applications, but will need to work at a much higher temperature than has been possible. Two studies suggest that this goal could be met in the near future. See Letter p.439

    • Roberta Sessoli

  • Letter |

    Magnetic hysteresis is observed in a dysprosocenium complex at temperatures of up to 60 kelvin, the origin of which is the localized metal–ligand vibrational modes unique to dysprosocenium.

    • Conrad A. P. Goodwin
    • , Fabrizio Ortu
    •  & David P. Mills

  • News & Views |

    Small changes to molecular structures can transform how reactions occur, but studying reaction mechanisms directly is difficult. An imaging technique that provides direct insights into competing mechanisms might improve matters.

    • Claire Vallance

  • News & Views |

    Biological molecules are often imaged by attaching fluorescent labels — but only a few label types can be used at a time. A method that could smash the record for the number of labels that can be used together is now reported. See Letter p.465

    • Charles H. Camp Jr
    •  & Marcus T. Cicerone

  • Letter |

    Stimulated Raman scattering under electronic pre-resonance conditions, combined with a new palette of probes, enables super-multiplex imaging of molecular targets in living cells with very high vibrational selectivity and sensitivity.

    • Lu Wei
    • , Zhixing Chen
    •  & Wei Min

  • News & Views |

    Organic semiconductor devices require good electrical contacts with conducting materials, but such contacts are often inefficient. An approach that tackles this problem will enable a wide range of applications. See Letter p.536

    • Antonio Facchetti

  • News & Views |

    A nanoscale imaging method that uses ultrashort light pulses to initiate and follow the motion of a single molecule adsorbed on a solid surface opens a window onto the physical and chemical dynamics of molecules on surfaces. See Letter p.263

    • Nicholas Camillone III

  • News & Views |

    In 1991, an energy-efficient solar cell was reported that was both simple in design and relatively inexpensive. This invention has since inspired the development of solar cells that have even higher efficiencies.

    • Mohammad K. Nazeeruddin

  • Letter |

    Iron-containing zeolites have an exceptional ability to convert methane into methanol, but their active site have been hard to study; now, magnetic circular dichroism has been used to explore the reactive species, providing a technique that should be generally applicable, and revealing the value of constraining active sites within a lattice to improve catalyst functionality.

    • Benjamin E. R. Snyder
    • , Pieter Vanelderen
    •  & Edward I. Solomon

  • News & Views |

    A solid composite material has been made that conducts electricity through the rapid transport of silver ions, which diffuse faster than in some liquids. The material holds promise for applications in charge-storage devices. See Article p.159

    • Tom Nilges

  • Article |

    An artificial composite of the super-ionic conductor RbAg4I5 and the electronic conductor graphite exhibits extremely fast diffusion of silver ions at the interface between the two materials, generating both silver-excess and silver-deficient sites.

    • Chia-Chin Chen
    • , Lijun Fu
    •  & Joachim Maier

  • News & Views |

    An investigation of how ultracold molecules are broken apart by light reveals surprising, previously unobserved quantum effects. The work opens up avenues of research in quantum optics. See Letter p.122

    • David W. Chandler

  • Letter |

    Combining cavity-enhanced direct frequency comb spectroscopy with buffer gas cooling enables rapid collection of well-resolved infrared spectra for molecules such as nitromethane, naphthalene and adamantane, confirming the value of the combined approach for studying much larger and more complex molecules than have been probed so far.

    • Ben Spaun
    • , P. Bryan Changala
    •  & Jun Ye

  • News & Views |

    Processes such as photosynthesis depend on the interplay between the electric dipoles of chromophore molecules. Yet these dipole–dipole interactions have not been visualized at the atomic level — until now. See Letter p.623

    • Guillaume Schull

  • Letter |

    Luminescence induced by highly localized excitations that are produced by electrons tunnelling from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope is used to map the spatial distribution of the excitonic coupling in well-defined arrangements of a few zinc-phthalocyanine molecules and the dependence of this spatial distribution on the relative orientation and phase of the transition dipoles of the individual molecules.

    • Yang Zhang
    • , Yang Luo
    •  & J. G. Hou

  • Letter |

    Lithium–oxygen batteries allow oxygen to be reduced at the battery’s cathode when a current is drawn; in present-day batteries, this results in formation of Li2O2, but it is now shown that another high energy density material, namely LiO2, with better electronic conduction can be used instead as the discharge product, if the electrode is decorated with iridium nanoparticles.

    • Jun Lu
    • , Yun Jung Lee
    •  & Khalil Amine

  • Letter |

    Two flexible metal-organic frameworks are presented as solid adsorbents for methane that undergo reversible phase transitions at specific methane pressures, enabling greater storage capacities of usable methane than have been achieved previously, while also providing internal heat management of the system.

    • Jarad A. Mason
    • , Julia Oktawiec
    •  & Jeffrey R. Long

  • News & Views |

    Copper and manganese have been engineered to show magnetism at room temperature in thin films interfaced with organic molecules. The findings show promise for developing new magnetic materials. See Letter p.69

    • Karthik V. Raman
    •  & Jagadeesh S. Moodera

  • Letter |

    Coherent energy transport is key to the operation of the photosynthetic machinery and the successful implementation of molecular electronics; self-assembled supramolecular nanofibres based on carbonyl-bridged triarylamines are now shown to transport singlet excitons over micrometre-scale distances at room temperature.

    • Andreas T. Haedler
    • , Klaus Kreger
    •  & Richard Hildner

  • News & Views |

    The heavy element lawrencium is available in only tiny quantities. Measurement of one of its atomic properties was thus an experimental challenge, but indispensably validates theoretical models of heavy elements. See Letter p.209

    • Andreas Türler

  • Letter |

    Mapping the frontier-orbital interactions with atom specificity using X-ray laser-based femtosecond-resolution spectroscopy reveals that spin crossover and ligation determine the sub-picosecond excited-state dynamics of a transition-metal complex in solution.

    • Ph. Wernet
    • , K. Kunnus
    •  & A. Föhlisch

  • News & Views |

    Films of ice less than 1 nanometre thick, sandwiched between sheets of graphene, have been observed to adopt a square lattice structure quite different from the widely occurring hexagonal structure of bulk ice. See Letter p.443

    • Alan K. Soper

  • Letter |

    The structure of the low-dimensional water confined in hydrophobic pores is shown, using electron microscopy and supported by molecular dynamics simulations, to be ‘square ice’, which does not have the conventional tetrahedral hydrogen bonding.

    • G. Algara-Siller
    • , O. Lehtinen
    •  & I. V. Grigorieva

  • Letter |

    Chemical force microscopy measurements show that the immobilization of specific cationic groups near non-polar domains produces pronounced changes in the domains’ hydrophobic interaction strengths: charged ammonium groups double interaction strengths, whereas guanidinium groups eliminate measurable interactions.

    • C. Derek Ma
    • , Chenxuan Wang
    •  & Nicholas L. Abbott

  • Letter |

    By passing light through a chiral sample — here vapours and solutions — in a specially designed ring cavity, the resulting chiral signals can be isolated from the achiral backgrounds and enhanced by a factor of more than 1,000, making them detectable in situations where conventional means of measurement fail.

    • Dimitris Sofikitis
    • , Lykourgos Bougas
    •  & T. Peter Rakitzis

  • Letter |

    A stable crystal phase and two metastable liquid phases of the ST2 model of water exist at the same deeply supercooled condition, and the two liquids undergo a first-order liquid–liquid transition that meets stringent thermodynamic criteria.

    • Jeremy C. Palmer
    • , Fausto Martelli
    •  & Pablo G. Debenedetti

  • Letter |

    Femtosecond resolution X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy is shown to track the charge and spin dynamics triggered when an iron coordination complex is excited by light, and establishes the critical role of intermediate spin states in the de-excitation process.

    • Wenkai Zhang
    • , Roberto Alonso-Mori
    •  & Kelly J. Gaffney

  • Letter |

    A technique of NMR thermometry that relies on the inverse relationship between NMR linewidths and temperature can be used to map non-invasively the gas temperatures inside catalytic reactors, offering unprecedented capabilities for testing the approximations used in reactor modelling.

    • Nanette N. Jarenwattananon
    • , Stefan Glöggler
    •  & Louis-S. Bouchard

  • Letter |

    Here the Kramers diffusion coefficient and free-energy barrier are characterized for the first time through single-molecule fluorescence measurements of the temperature- and viscosity-dependence of the transition path time for protein folding.

    • Hoi Sung Chung
    •  & William A. Eaton

  • Letter |

    A new multiplex technique of coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectro-imaging with two laser frequency combs is shown to record molecular spectra of broad bandwidth on a microsecond scale.

    • Takuro Ideguchi
    • , Simon Holzner
    •  & Theodor W. Hänsch

  • Letter |

    Synchrotron-based nuclear resonance vibrational spectroscopy is used to characterize the reactive Fe(iv)=O intermediate of the halogenase SyrB2; the substrate directs the orientation of this intermediate, presenting specific frontier molecular orbitals that can activate the selective halogenation.

    • Shaun D. Wong
    • , Martin Srnec
    •  & Edward I. Solomon

  • Letter |

    Molecular dynamics simulations of melting ice have identified the spatial separation of a defect pair into its constituent components as a crucial first step: once this step has been taken, defects can persist and grow, and rapidly turn ice into liquid water.

    • Kenji Mochizuki
    • , Masakazu Matsumoto
    •  & Iwao Ohmine

  • Letter |

    Microwave spectroscopy is used to map the sign of an electric dipole Rabi frequency — which depends directly on the chirality of the molecule — onto the phase of emitted microwave radiation, thereby determining the chirality of cold gas-phase molecules.

    • David Patterson
    • , Melanie Schnell
    •  & John M. Doyle

  • Letter |

    A class of metal-free organic electroluminescent molecules is designed in which both singlet and triplet excitons contribute to light emission, leading to an intrinsic fluorescence efficiency greater than 90 per cent and an external electroluminescence efficiency comparable to that achieved in high-efficiency phosphorescence-based organic light-emitting diodes.

    • Hiroki Uoyama
    • , Kenichi Goushi
    •  & Chihaya Adachi

  • News & Views |

    Spectroscopic analysis reveals that, at low temperatures, hydrophobic molecules dissolved in water strengthen the hydrogen bonding between nearby water molecules. But at high temperatures, the reverse can be true. See Letter p.582

    • Huib J. Bakker

  • News & Views |

    The effect of force on a chemical reaction has been visited in three different molecular environments. The results reveal a unifying framework that enables predictions of force-induced reactivity.

    • Stephen L. Craig

  • Letter |

    A method of laser-induced recollision permits measurement with attosecond resolution of the times at which the electron leaves the tunnelling barrier and discriminates between the ionization times of two carbon dioxide orbitals.

    • Dror Shafir
    • , Hadas Soifer
    •  & Nirit Dudovich

  • News & Views |

    By ripping an electron away from a molecule and then slamming it back again, the motion of nuclei in a molecule has been tracked with extremely high temporal and spatial resolution. See Letter p.194

    • Misha Y. Ivanov

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • G. Dominguez
    • , G. Wilkins
    •  & M. H. Thiemens

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