Research articles

The synthesis of electrically undoped silicon clathrate and unusual silicon phases is a challenge, but such materials have attractive opto-electronic properties. Here, high-throughput modeling predicts that noble gases may induce nucleation of unexpected phases from liquid silicon at high temperature and pressure.

For many applications, positron emission tomography tracers must be produced with high specific activity. Here the authors identify variables leading to increased specific activity when tracers are synthesized in microliter volumes, and show that specific activity can influence tracer biodistribution.

The self-assembly of thermally stable structures in water is a challenge in supramolecular chemistry. Here, cooperativity between weak intramolecular forces allows amphiphiles to associate into cube-shaped assemblies that are thermally stable in water up to 150 °C.

The conversion of carbon dioxide into valuable commodity chemicals is a promising approach to exploit anthropogenic emissions. Here, the authors use carbon-supported iron combined with alkali promoters derived from biomass to convert carbon dioxide directly to heavy linear terminal olefins.

Improving the synthesis of crystalline monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides requires insight into domain and boundary structures. Here, the authors produce monolayer rhenium diselenide by chemical vapour deposition onto gold foil, allowing in situ analysis of domain and defect structure.

When hydrocarbon molecules are exposed to an intense laser field, triatomic hydrogen molecular ions are ejected. Here, femtosecond spectroscopic study of the production of triatomic hydrogen ions from methanol dications offers insight into the dynamics of hydrocarbon cations.

Amplifying enantioselective interactions to the macroscopic scale remains a challenging goal. Here, visible gel pieces assemble enantioselectively as a result of chiral recognition between tryptophan and cyclodextrin monomers.

Tungstate accumulates in bone and can be resistant to chelation therapies typically used to remove heavy metals in vivo. Here, tungstate is shown to accumulate in mouse bone tissue in a persistent, insoluble form proposed to be condensed polytungstate.

Transition state energy correlations are key to the computational search for new catalysts, but are computationally expensive. Here the authors generalize a recent approach based on bond-order conservation arguments and apply it to dehydrogenation reactions on low index metal surfaces

Graphene oxide membranes are promising materials for the separation of low molecular weight gases. Here, composite membranes comprising metal organic frameworks and graphene oxide show improved selectivity for the separation of hydrogen and carbon dioxide over graphene oxide alone.

Imparting both high strength and stretchability in polymers is challenging as it requires changing the crosslinking density of the polymer network. Here, Miwa et al. use an ionic elastomer with dynamic crosslinks to achieve high strength under rapid deformation but high stretchability under slow deformation in a single material.

Metal-organic frameworks are candidates for future energy storage materials, but are limited by poor conductivity and random crystal orientation on current collectors. Here, fabrication of electrodes containing uniformly oriented crystals supported by carbon nanowalls leads to improved electrochemical performance.