Unlocking sulfur's third electron boosts lithium-sulfur battery voltage and capacity

Good news! Sounds almost like very boring research! Like Thomas Alva Edison tested over 6000 different plant materials to find a better filament for the incandescent light bulb.

There were actually three related studies published around the same time.

"... The three studies were led by Distinguished University Professor Chunsheng Wang and received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. Together, they show how controlling reactions and transport at battery interfaces can enable more efficient use of sulfur, silicon and lithium metal. Each design addresses a different failure mechanism while advancing the shared goals of higher energy, faster charging and reliable operation under demanding conditions. ..."

"... Researchers ... recently introduced a new ionic liquid electrolyte that could improve the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries. This electrolyte, ... was found to increase both the voltage and energy storage of lithium-sulfur batteries. ...

As part of their study, the researchers tested various electrolytes with different proportions of lithium salt and an ionic liquid containing chloride. ... then ran computer simulations to model the movement and interactions of atoms and molecules in batteries with these electrolytes. Ultimately, the team identified the best-performing electrolyte and used it to design a lithium-sulfur battery with a different internal chemistry. ..."

From the abstract:

"Rechargeable lithium–sulfur batteries offer a promising route to high-energy storage using abundant sulfur, but their energy density is constrained by low operating voltage, sluggish redox kinetics and polysulfide shuttling.

Raising sulfur to higher oxidation states could increase cell voltage, yet reversible high-valence sulfur chemistry in lithium batteries remains difficult because chloride species bind Li+ and halogen-mediated reactions consume electrolyte. Here we show that a free-chloride-rich ionic liquid electrolyte enables a Li||S2Cl2 chemistry that addresses these limitations by reversibly converting Li2S to S2Cl2 through a three-electron sulfur redox process. The electrolyte functions as an ionic mediator with only a minor capacity contribution.

This chemistry increases the average operating voltage from 2.05 to 2.54 V at 25 °C and 0.2C, raises sulfur-specific capacity by 58% and delivers an electrode-level specific energy above 1,700 Wh kg−1 with cycling over 100 cycles."

Unlocking sulfur's third electron boosts lithium-sulfur battery voltage and capacity

University of Maryland Researchers Develop Three Materials Strategies for Higher-Energy Lithium Batteries (original news release 1)

UMD Researchers Develop Strategies for Higher-Energy Lithium Batteries (original news release 2)

New battery chemistry could help lithium-sulfur batteries store more energy (original news release 3)

Lithium–disulfur dichloride batteries (no public access)

Reversible three-electron sulfur redox enabled by phase-separated ionic-liquid electrolytes

Chemists find a new pathway to luminescence through mechanochemical force

Amazing stuff!

"In brief

• Computational modeling revealed an unexpected order of bond breaking in the core molecular structure that causes bioluminescence in nature.
• Mechanical force ruptures the dioxetane molecule’s carbon-carbon bond first, which is contrary to previous understanding of how the break in the molecule’s bonded square of oxygen and carbon atoms leads to light emission.
• The findings suggest the potential to develop improved stress sensors as well as gain insight into some forms of biological luminescence.

...

Chemists have long used molecules called dioxetanes to create light. These molecules have the same core structure that enables biological luminescence: two oxygen atoms and two carbon atoms bonded together in a square. Heat or mechanical force can break those bonds, causing light emission. ...

But when ... researchers modeled force applied to dioxetanes, they found that the bond between the carbon atoms breaks first, then the one between the oxygens."

From the abstract:

"1,2-Dioxetanes are well-known for their chemiluminescent decomposition initiated by O–O bond scission.

Under thermal conditions, this chemiluminescence has been used for molecular imaging, while mechanochemical triggering of chemiluminescence can be a powerful tool for studying stress in materials.

It has been widely assumed that mechanochemical activation follows the same O–O scission pathway as the thermal case.

However, our first-principles simulations of the mechanochemically triggered decomposition of 1,2-dioxetane show that the traditional O–O scission pathway is largely insensitive to applied force.

Instead, a thermally inaccessible C–C bond scission pathway is stabilized by applied force and becomes energetically favored above a critical force (∼1.8–3.0 nN). This force-induced mechanistic switch is robust across various pulling directions and substituents, including the experimentally tested adamantyl derivative.

These findings establish a new, fundamentally force-dependent pathway for chemiluminescence.

They demonstrate that mechanical force can be used not only to accelerate a reaction, but to fundamentally change its mechanism. This presents significant opportunities for new mechanophore design and mechanochemical sensing applications."

Chemists find a new path to luminescence | Stanford Report "The molecule behind the glow of fireflies and plankton breaks apart in an unexpected order under force – a discovery that could lead to better stress sensors and help illuminate some mysteries of the natural world."

The Force Awakens a Dormant Chemiluminescent Pathway in 1,2-Dioxetane (no public access)

Graphical abstract

A Magnetic Clue to Life’s Origins Chemistry

Amazing stuff!

"... Their study, recently published in Chem, offers a possible missing link in a theory proposing that life first emerged on magnetic surfaces, such as the beds of shallow lakes rich in magnetic minerals. ...

an experiment ... used right- and left-handed versions of methionine – an amino acid that typically initiates protein synthesis – and passed a solution containing this amino acid through a paper filter embedded with micron-sized magnetic particles.

To track the molecules, the researchers incorporated two carbon isotopes – atoms of the same element with different weights – into the amino acid.

In some experiments, right-handed molecules contained the more common, lighter carbon-12 isotope and left-handed ones the heavier carbon-13;

in others, the assignment was reversed. The direction of magnetization was also switched: In different iterations of the experiment, the magnets first pointed toward the solution with one of their poles, north or south, then with the other. After filtering the solution, the scientists used mass spectrometry to measure the ratio of isotopes and the balance between the two chiral forms.

The result was unexpected. The magnetic filter appeared to separate methionine not only by chirality but also by isotope composition. Molecules containing the heavier carbon isotope – regardless of their handedness – showed a stronger attraction to particles magnetized in one direction over the other. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"The bigger picture

Isotopic fractionation in biomolecules provides key insight into chemical and biochemical formation pathways, yet the mechanisms underlying isotope selectivity in chiral molecular systems remain poorly understood.

This work demonstrates a direct experimental connection between spin-dependent interactions and isotopic effects in a chiral amino acid, showing that molecules differing only in their carbon isotope composition interact differently with oppositely magnetized surfaces. These findings reveal a previously unexplored contribution of electronic spin polarization to isotopic behavior in molecular systems.

More broadly, the results introduce spin selectivity as a new physical dimension in isotope chemistry.

In the longer term, such spin- and chirality-dependent interactions may enable new approaches for isotope discrimination or separation in chiral chemical environments, with potential relevance to analytical chemistry and materials design.

By linking magnetic interactions, molecular chirality, and isotope effects, this study establishes a framework for investigating how subtle spin-mediated processes can influence isotopic outcomes in complex molecular systems.

Highlights

• Spin-polarized magnetic filters induce carbon isotope fractionation in L-methionine

• Volume-resolved elution reveals metastable spin-dependent interactions

• Chirality couples electronic spin selectivity to isotope chemistry

• Spin-dependent effects may shape isotopic signatures in early biomolecules

Summary

Distinct isotopic fractionation in biomolecules, compared with atmospheric values, reflects their biosynthetic origin.

Monitoring these fractionation changes offers a valuable approach for probing early metabolic networks.

A key question in the study of life’s origins is the role of electronic spin and magnetic surfaces in symmetry breaking and the emergence of homochirality.

Here, we used magnetic filters to show that the dynamical interaction with the magnetic surfaces changes the isotope fractions of 13C L-methionine compared with 12C L-methionine.

Specifically, mass spectrometry analysis reveals that the isotopic fractionation of both natural and ¹³C-enriched L-methionine is influenced by electron spin-dependent interactions."

A Magnetic Clue to Life’s Origins - Chemistry | Weizmann Wonder Wander - News, Features and Discoveries "Study suggests that magnetic surfaces may influence not only the handedness of biological molecules but also their isotope composition – thus connecting two fundamental fingerprints of life"

Spin-dependent isotopic fractionation of L-methionine (no public access, appeared in March 2026)

Graphical abstract

Quantum computers Modeling the chemistry of fusion reactor material

Good news! Is this just incremental progress or a major step forward?

"Quantum is aiding in the race to realize fusion energy by taking a step toward making the fuel for a fusion reactor. New work ... uses quantum computing to model molten salt—salt in a liquid phase. When wrapped around a fusion reaction like a blanket, molten salt could produce a rare fuel necessary to sustain that reaction: tritium.

The chemistry involved in extracting tritium from the molten salt is so complex that researchers have not been able to accurately model it using classical compute methods, and molten salt experiments are difficult and expensive, requiring immense energy and specialized equipment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM showed how hybrid quantum-AI methods could yield better results, speeding the pace of fusion research. ..."

From the abstract:

"Molten salts such as FLiBe (2LiF--BeF2) are leading blanket materials for breeding and recovering tritium in fusion reactors.

Predicting tritium speciation requires accurate electronic ground-state energies for representative molten-salt clusters, a demanding task for correlated electronic-structure methods.

Here we report the first application of heterogeneous quantum--classical computing to tritium binding in FLiBe. Clusters drawn from ab initio molecular dynamics are partitioned by an embedded-wavefunction (EWF) method into atom-centered fragments, and the largest fragments are solved on IBM quantum hardware using extended sample-based quantum diagonalization (ext-SQD).

Across nine clusters, the heterogeneous quantum--classical workflow reproduces fragment ground-state energies with agreement to full configuration interaction within 0.7~kcal/mol and a mean absolute deviation of 0.3~kcal/mol.

In contrast, fragmented and unfragmented conformational energy differences and tritium binding energies differ by 12~kcal/mol and 110~kcal/mol on average, respectively, identifying fragment construction rather than fragment solution as the dominant source of algorithmic bias.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such demonstration for a charged ionic system and in particular an inorganic molten salt, where electrostatic and polarization effects make the accurate treatment of electronic correlation particularly challenging.

These results also identify areas of future research towards an accurate and scalable quantum--classical workflow to compute free-energy estimates of tritium speciation in fusion blankets."

Modeling the chemistry of fusion reactor material | IBM Quantum Computing Blog "Researchers used quantum-centric supercomputing to simulate molten salts, in an early step toward solving a key problem in fusion power."

Quantum Computations on Fusion Blanket Molten Salts (preprint, open access)

61% of Germany’s chemistry PhD students consider quitting their degrees

More bad news from the banana republic of Germany! Have German chemists become oversensitive (wie Mimosen)?

"Almost two-thirds of Germany’s chemistry PhD students have considered quitting their degrees, according to new research conducted by the German Chemical Society’s Young Chemists Network (JCF) [Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker e.V.]. Respondents to a survey organised by the JCF cited mental health issues, poor supervision and high workloads among the top reasons they had considering ending their studies. 31% of respondents claim to have been victims of abuse of power. ..."

61% of Germany’s chemistry PhD students consider quitting their degrees "Unhealthy supervisor–student relationships driving poor mental health outcomes among chemistry researchers"

Stardust may have seeded the Solar System

Amazing stuff! The charm of stardust! Or when stardust catches the eyes of scientists! 😊

"... Roughly 4.6 billion years ago, part of a giant molecular cloud collapsed, with most mass collecting to form what would one day become our Sun. The leftover matter flattened into a rotating protoplanetary disc, which ultimately gave rise to planets, moons, and other objects that make up the Solar System. As the disc cooled, some of its matter condensed to form tiny mineral structures known as calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs). These materials, which are preserved inside meteorites, represent some of the Solar System’s oldest known rocks.

Scientists recently found that some of these CAIs contain large amounts of strontium-84, a relatively rare isotope found in certain kinds of stardust that existed before the Sun formed. The discovery came as a surprise, since it was previously assumed that the region where CAIs formed was hot enough to completely vaporize this dust. The team posits that grains of ancient stardust instead acted as nucleation seeds, drawing the Solar System’s earliest solids to condense around them—just as a particle of dust might accumulate water droplets that freeze to form a snowflake."

From the abstract:

"Recent reports of extreme strontium-84 excesses in primitive Solar System condensates, known as fine-grained calcium-aluminum–rich inclusions (fg-CAIs), suggest that presolar stardust may be preserved in refractory meteoritic components.

This is at odds with preconceptions that presolar grains were completely vaporized in the CAI-forming region.

Here, we reappraise the role of presolar materials in early condensation and overall disk heterogeneity by isolating strontium from primary fg-CAI phases.

We demonstrate that extreme strontium-84 anomalies are likely hosted in a subpopulation of CAI oxides. The anomalies of primitive noncarrier phases are shown to be attenuated but correlated with the abundance of presolar precursors, which suggests that carriers exert leverage on ensuing condensate compositions. We propose that this relationship between isotope anomalies in refractory CAI components stems from stardust acting as nucleation seeds for the earliest solids formed in the Solar System."

ScienceAdviser

Stardust as nucleation seeds for the earliest solids in the Solar System (open access)

Ferric chloride steers lithium away from dendrites to improve safety of lithium-metal batteries

Good news!

I tried Google AI using multiple prompts to retrieve the underlying research paper. It completely failed!

"Ferric chloride (FeCl₃) could help solve one of the biggest safety challenges facing solid-state lithium-metal batteries.

Researchers found that adding the widely used industrial chemical to polyethylene oxide-based electrolytes promotes the growth of lithium as spherical particles rather than needle-like dendrites.

Surprisingly, the additive also softens the electrolyte, challenging the long-held view that strong electrolytes are essential for suppressing dendrite growth during battery cycling. ..."

Ferric chloride steers lithium away from dendrites to improve safety of lithium-metal batteries | Research | Chemistry World (behind paywall) "Common chemical additive challenges the assumption that stiffer electrolytes are needed to suppress dendrites"

Is the US witnessing the start of a brain drain of chemists to China? Really!

Several appear to be Chinese nationals (who might have returned anyway), some are dubious!

Is this just or mostly sensational or alarmism and hysteria journalism? I bet!

Once some of these Chemists start working in China, they may realize it is actually still not very great to work in a dictatorship country run by the Communist Party of China and they regret and return to the West again! Mark my words!

"Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi is the latest prominent chemist to leave for China and his high-profile departure may signal growing unease"

Is the US witnessing the start of a brain drain of chemists to China? | News | Chemistry World

Chemical recycling plants closing in EU and US

Bad news! More research is certainly needed to find better and cheaper ways to recycle plastics or find better substitutes for plastics!

Is this article possibly spreading alarmism and hysteria?

"The nascent chemical recycling industry – in which plastics are broken down into oils or constituent monomers to be remade into new materials – is contracting across Europe and the US as recyclers call for policy stability to make the industry investable.

Recent closures, postponements or project cancellations ‘reflect the broader structural crisis facing the whole of Europe’s plastics recycling industry (both mechanical and chemical),’ says Maria Vera Duran, policy director at industry body Recycling Europe. ..."

Chemical recycling plants closing in EU and US | Business | Chemistry World (behind paywall) "Firms aiming to break down and re-make plastics are struggling with economic feasibility and environmental impact"

A step towards psychedelics with none of the undesirable side effects/symptoms

Good news! Amazing stuff!

"Psychedelic drugs hold great promise for treating mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But beyond their otherworldly hallucinogenic manifestations, many of these drugs also come with all-too-familiar side effects like nausea, vomiting, and gastrointestinal discomfort.

This occurs because the psychedelic compounds activate several off-target pathways as well as the intended serotonin receptors in the brain.

Reducing these unwanted interactions and the unpleasant symptoms that come with them is an important step for demonstrating the safety of psychedelics.

In a new study ... researchers pushed closer to this reality by re-engineering the synthetic psychedelic drug quipazine to activate only the desired receptors .

The pharmacologists began by examining quipazine atom-by-atom to identify how the drug could bind to both the target 5-HT2AR receptor and the 5-HT3R receptor that causes nausea and other gastrointestinal symptoms.

After singling out the nitrogen atom responsible, they replaced it and rearranged the whole molecule. The resultant drug could still bind to the desired 5-HT2AR receptor, but it bounced off 5-HT3R receptors.

To test the new psychedelic’s effectiveness, the researchers gave the drug to mice with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Once the hallucinogenic effects subsided, the mice exhibited fewer symptoms and showed no apparent discomfort. When they examined the animals’ brains, the researchers found an increased density of neuron structures called dendritic spines, a telltale sign that the psychedelic had restored some of the brain activity lost to depression. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

The clinical use of serotonergic psychedelics is limited by their side effects. Younkin et al. generated a derivative (called VCU-1012) of the psychedelic quipazine with greater activity at the serotonin receptor subtype that mediates the clinically desirable effects (5-HT2AR) than at the serotonin receptor subtype responsible for the undesirable ones.

Similar to quipazine, VCU-1012 exerted antidepressant and antianxiolytic effects in mice but without the gastrointestinal side effects of quipazine. Moreover, like other psychedelics, VCU-1012 increased dendritic spine density in the frontal cortex in a 5-HT2AR–dependent manner.

Thus, VCU-1012 shows promise as a 5-HT2AR agonist with a more favorable side effect profile than those of typical psychedelics. ...

Abstract

Psychedelics that target serotonin 2A receptors (5-HT2ARs) hold therapeutic promise for neuropsychiatric disorders but are often hindered by off-target actions. The 5-HT2AR agonist quipazine also activates 5-HT3R, which contributes to undesirable side effects.

Here, we developed VCU-1012, a quipazine-based, structurally distinct 5-HT2AR agonist devoid of 5-HT3R activity.

VCU-1012 was developed by applying a strategic chemical design that combined deconstruction to pinpoint the nitrogen atom critical for 5-HT2AR activation with structure-activity relationship studies to minimize 5-HT3R agonism.

We showed that VCU-1012 modulated dendritic spine structural plasticity in the frontal cortex and produced antidepressant-like effects in mice through 5-HT2AR without activating 5-HT3R, thereby avoiding the gastrointestinal side effects of quipazine.

In addition, our molecular modeling and mutant analysis suggested that VCU-1012 interacted in the canonical orthosteric binding pocket of 5-HT2AR.

Together, these findings establish VCU-1012 as a potential therapeutic agent with reduced gastrointestinal impact, emphasize how differences in ligand-receptor interactions influence ligand positioning in the receptor binding pocket, and provide guidance for designing psychedelics with targeted therapeutic benefits."

ScienceAdviser

Design of a new psychedelic quipazine analog with therapeutic efficacy and potentially fewer side effects (no public access)

Design and Synthesis of Quipazine Analogs for Programmable Control of Psychedelic Effects (A PhD thesis covering a similar topic. The author was not part of the team authoring the above research article.)

VCU-1012 (Wikipedia page indicating this psychedelic drug was already developed in 2024)

VCU-1012 2D chemical structure

Scientists find ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole and was caused by carbon tetrachloride since the 1930s

Amazing stuff!

These authors seem to be obsessed with the instrument of a thought experiment! In this particular study it might have been overused.

"... In a study ... the scientists suggest that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared as early as 1957 — about 30 years before the ozone hole was discovered. And, this first signal of ozone loss popped up not in the Antarctic, but in the upper stratosphere of the tropics. What’s more, the cause of this early depletion was not due to CFCs, but to another industrial chemical: carbon tetrachloride.  ..."

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

This paper examines the earliest emergence of human-caused ozone depletion: the when, the where, and the why.  ...

The “when” is as early as the late 1950s—about 30 y before the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered and 20 y before the Molina–Rowland theory. The “where” is the tropical upper stratosphere, where a relatively small signal stands out against even smaller noise, allowing the earliest emergence. The “why” is the use of carbon tetrachloride as a solvent decades before chlorofluorocarbons became common in refrigeration and spray cans.

Abstract

The Antarctic ozone hole was first reported in 1985, and small ozone losses at the global scale were also observed in the late 1980s. The combination of field and laboratory measurements, together with modeling, quickly established anthropogenic chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as the cause of both the Antarctic and global ozone depletion.

However, when, where, and why the earliest ozone depletion could have been detected has not been determined.  ...

We find that human-caused ozone depletion was likely identifiable as early as 1957 in the tropical upper stratosphere. This region’s low internal variability enables the earliest detection of the anthropogenic signal, even though tropical ozone losses in the upper stratosphere were smaller than those in higher-latitude regions. ... 

Further, while CFCs are widely recognized as the primary drivers of current ozone depletion, we find that early ozone loss was primarily caused by human-made carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), used mainly as a solvent. These findings suggest that a clear human influence on the stratospheric ozone layer began nearly 70 y ago, even before substantial emissions of CFCs from spray cans or air conditioning."

Scientists find ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Using modern tools, they also determined that carbon tetrachloride, used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent as early as the 1930s, was at the root of early ozone loss."

The emergence of human influence on the ozone layer by the 1960s

Resonance structures of ozone with lone pairs indicated (Source)

Polarity of Carbon Tetrachloride (CCl4) (Source)

Membrane technologies for crude oil separation could cut refining energy use by up to 90%

Good news!

"Three teams have developed membranes that can efficiently separate hydrocarbons in crude oil. These materials are scalable, can work under industrial conditions and help reduce the energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions compared with conventional methods. ‘Membrane-based hydrocarbon fractionation is [now] moving from a promising idea toward a more practical technology,’ ..."

Membrane technologies for crude oil separation could cut refining energy use by up to 90% | Chemistry World (behind paywall) "Separating crude oil into useful fractions take 1% of the world’s energy. These researchers have a plan to tackle this"

How similar are the protein names of p16INK4a and p16-ARC? Hundreds of scientists were confused in more than 300 papers

An odd story! 

For lay people, these two names are not similar at all, I would presume! Maybe you have to be an egghead to confuse these two names! 😊

"Hundreds of scientists who study cancer and aging have deployed the wrong antibody to test for a key protein, according to a researcher who exposes errors in the biomedical literature. Instead of antibodies that recognize p16INK4a, a tumor suppressing protein that may also promote aging, these researchers used versions that tag the similarly named protein p16-ARC, which helps shape the cell’s molecular skeleton.

The gaffe appears in more than 300 papers, including some published by top journals such as Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, eLife, and Science Advances, reports Sholto David, a molecular biologist at the U.K. biotech OXB and a part-time error hunter. David’s latest revelations, posted on 2 June on the blog For Better Science, have sent researchers digging through old lab notebooks and, in at least one case, back to the lab to rerun experiments. ..."

ScienceAdviser

Chemists design impact-resistant plastics for shoe soles, tires and other products

Amazing stuff! In my next life I'll become a chemist! 😊 

What about more bounce and springiness for soles?

"With help from a novel cross-linking molecule, MIT chemists have shown they can substantially improve the ballistic impact resistance of common polymers, including polystyrene and a type of rubber used to make shoe soles. ...

To make the polymer more resistant to sudden impact, the MIT team added weak bonds scattered throughout the material as cross-links, which allows the material to dissipate energy much more effectively under deformations. When struck by a projectile, these weak bonds selectively break at the site of impact to open up pathways for enhanced energy absorption.

The researchers found that this approach can also fortify styrene-butadiene-styrene rubber, and they are now investigating whether it will also work for other types of polymers such as latex or the rubber that is used to make tires.  ..."

From the abstract:

"Mechanical failure is a marked limitation for plastics used in structural, protective and coating applications. In particular, perforation under high-rate deformation is difficult to mitigate through conventional molecular design.

Cross-linking is widely used to improve the thermal and chemical stability of polymers, yet under mechanical deformation, it typically renders materials more brittle, limiting impact resistance and functional lifetime. Overcoming this fundamental trade-off between stability and toughness remains a central challenge. Here we demonstrate that embedding a small fraction of force-sensitive mechanophores as cross-links into common polymers fundamentally reverses this trade-off, producing materials with substantially enhanced ballistic energy dissipation.

At strain rates exceeding 107 s−1, we show that mechanophore-cross-linked networks absorb up to about 115% more energy than conventional thermosets and surpass even their uncross-linked thermoplastic counterparts.

We attribute this behaviour to a force- and adiabatic-heating-driven local thermoset-to-thermoplastic transition, in which selective mechanophore scission facilitates viscoplastic deformation at the impact site while preserving network integrity in the surrounding regions.

We demonstrate the generality of this strategy in both glassy polystyrene and rubbery styrene–butadiene–styrene triblock copolymers.

These results establish mechanophore cross-linking as a design principle for converting commodity polymers into impact-resilient materials and open directions at the intersection of polymer mechanochemistry and extreme-strain-rate material behaviour."

MIT chemists design impact-resistant plastics | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Introducing weaker bonds into polystyrene and rubber helps these materials dissipate energy, making them more resistant to destructive forces."

Mechanophore cross-linking enhances ballistic energy dissipation of polymers (no public access)

A Glimpse at the Origins of Life Through chirality

Amazing stuff!

"... In a new study ... the researchers found that an electron experiences a magnetic field of different strength when traveling through each mirror-image form. This asymmetric behavior not only challenges conventional assumptions but also lends support to a theory about how life began on Earth. ...

Although chiral molecules can exist in two forms, scientists realized more than 150 years ago that living organisms “choose” only one: a left-handed form for proteins and a right-handed form for sugars, DNA and RNA. ...

A first step toward solving the puzzle came in 1999, when ... passed an electric current – a stream of electrons – through chiral molecules and discovered that each mirror-image form behaves differently. Electrons act like tiny magnets, with north and south poles, and possess a property called spin, which determines their magnetic orientation. As these tiny magnets move through a chiral molecule, they follow a spiral path, which causes them to experience a magnetic force that can either accelerate or hinder their motion. The researchers found that the two mirror-image forms exert opposite effects: One mainly speeds up electrons whose north pole aligns with their direction of motion, while the other speeds up electrons whose north pole points in the opposite direction. ...

that the two mirror-image forms not only favor electrons with opposite spins but also transmit them with different efficiencies. ...

The experiments revealed substantial differences in the strength of the magnetic field experienced by electrons in the two forms ...

“Our breakthrough was realizing that the difference between these two seemingly identical forms only emerges in motion,” ..."

From the abstract:

"Two fundamental questions have puzzled scientists for more than 150 years. “How did life become homochiral?” and “why was this specific handedness selected?”

Recently, it has been shown that homochirality could have emerged through the enantioselective interactions of molecules with magnetic substrates due to the asymmetric crystallization of an RNA precursor on a magnetite substrate, abundant on early Earth.

This phenomenon is based on the chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. Despite its robustness, this model could not provide an answer to the second question: Why one specific handedness (D for RNA) was selected.

Here, we demonstrate that spin-involving processes can have different outcomes in the two enantiomers of chiral molecules.

In chiral molecules with unpaired electrons or while electrons are passing through them, the total angular momentum vector, J, is aligned along the “easy axis,” which is defined by the magnetic anisotropy induced by the spin-orbit coupling and asymmetry of the molecular field.

The magnitude J is the same for both enantiomers, but the vectors may be aligned differently relative to the molecular frame in the two enantiomers.

This difference can be quantified by, for example, by the angle between J and electric dipole moment of the molecule, μ.

We show by direct measurements, theory, and ab initio calculations that dynamic spin processes in chiral molecules could result in different efficiencies of spin-related phenomena, including the interaction of chiral molecules with magnetic surfaces. The findings may provide an explanation for the specific homochirality in nature."

A Glimpse at the Origins of Life Through a Deceptive Mirror - Chemistry | Weizmann Wonder Wander - News, Features and Discoveries "Scientists may have solved a 150-year-old puzzle about why life favors one mirror-image molecule over another"

Dynamic breaking of mirror symmetry in spin-dependent electron transport through chiral media causes enantiomeric excesses (open access)

Adsorption of crystals of a biological chiral molecule onto a gold-coated cobalt surface. Larger crystals of one specific form of the molecule (left) tend to accumulate on this surface to a greater degree than those of its mirror-image form (right). ...

Fig. 1. The alignment of the total spin and the magnetic vectors.

Pentametallic nanoparticles self-assemble for ammonia decomposition catalyst in a simple synthesis

Amazing stuff! This seems to be a very promising approach!

"A counterintuitive technique developed by researchers ... allows pentametallic nanoparticles of relatively uniform size and composition to form spontaneously from a precursor solution containing the five metals. The nanoparticles are a promising catalyst for the decomposition of ammonia into hydrogen and the technique could also potentially be extended to produce other multimetallic nanoparticles. ...

Multimetallic nanocrystals can sometimes offer catalytic properties that nanocrystals of a single metal cannot such as higher atom economy for a precious metal or synergistic interactions between the metals.

However, they can be difficult to synthesise because different reactivities or natural crystal structures of the constituent metals may not lead to compositionally uniform products. ...

approach, depositing the metals from solution onto ruthenium nanoparticle seeds by mixing them with metal acetylacetonate precursor solutions and heating the mixture. When they studied bimetallic compositions, they found differing results. Iron formed variably sized, self-nucleated nanoparticles separate from ruthenium, copper formed core–shell nanoparticles, and cobalt and nickel both formed mixtures of the two. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Multimetallic nanocrystals offer valuable properties but are challenging to synthesize. Yoon et al. systematically explored how the interplay of ruthenium seeds with iron, cobalt, nickel, and copper precursors can be exploited to produce uniform pentametallic nanocrystals.

They showed that progressive addition of multiple metals suppresses unwanted nucleation and directs growth toward a uniform product. The resulting nanocrystals exhibited high thermal stability and enhanced catalytic activity for ammonia decomposition, highlighting a general strategy for designing complex functional nanomaterials. ...

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Multimetallic nanocrystals exhibit physical and chemical properties unattainable in monometallic systems, arising from the synergistic interplay of their constituent elements.

Synthesizing these materials with precise control over their size and composition represents an important goal. Differences in reduction potentials, interfacial energies, and nucleation and growth kinetics among metal precursors create both thermodynamic and kinetic challenges that often lead to asynchronous reduction and incorporation processes. Rather than forming a single, uniform product, these disparities frequently generate multiple particle populations with distinct sizes and compositions. Therefore, rational design principles that govern competitive reduction and growth processes are critical to directing multimetallic synthesis toward uniform products.

RATIONALE

We hypothesized that the inherent chemical complexity of reduction for multiple metal precursors could be exploited rather than avoided. Specifically, we investigated whether introducing a high number of different competing metals simultaneously during a seed-mediated synthesis might suppress the formation of unwanted heterogeneous products. Under such competitive conditions, mutual affinities and altered energy barriers control the reaction pathways, guiding synthesis toward a single, compositionally uniform product.

RESULTS

We discovered a counterintuitive, composition-focusing effect in which increasing the number of reacting metals dramatically improved product uniformity. 

Whereas introducing one or two base metals to ruthenium seeds yielded inhomogeneous products, simultaneously adding four metal precursors suppressed side reactions, resulting in a single pentametallic nanocrystal product. Time-lapse analysis during the heating process demonstrated that the metals deposited sequentially.

The initial elements that deposited acted as mediators that lowered the energy barrier for the addition of subsequent metals, building a multidomain architecture. This focusing phenomenon also proved highly versatile, successfully yielding uniform products regardless of seed size, precursor ratios, or the constituent metals. When used as ammonia decomposition reaction catalysts, the pentametallic nanocrystal-based catalysts achieved a catalytic rate more than four times higher than that of ruthenium catalysts and maintained their structural integrity and performance even after high-temperature treatments up to 900°C.

CONCLUSION

Our study demonstrates that competitive reactivity, typically viewed as a hurdle in chemical synthesis, can actively drive the formation of highly uniform multimetallic nanocrystals.

By increasing the number of competing elements, side reactions could be suppressed to focus the growth into a single structure.

The design rules established in this study provide a generalizable strategy for synthesizing complex multimetallic nanocrystals, offering a versatile platform for advancing catalysis and sustainable energy technologies."

Pentametallic nanoparticles self-assemble for ammonia decomposition catalyst | Chemistry World

Competitive reactivity drives size- and composition-focusing in multimetallic nanocrystals

KAIST unveils ‘complexity paradox’: Multimetallic nanoparticles grow more uniform as components increase

The five-metal nanoparticle showed potential as a catalyst to break ammonia down

The synthesis of the nanocrystal was surprisingly simple

Composition-focusing in multimetallic nanocrystal synthesis.

Garlic compound kills mosquitoes by halting mating and blocking egg-laying

Good news! I love garlic! Scientists were looking for an aphrodisiac and found the anaphrodisiac!

"... In fact, a new Yale study finds that garlic also functions as a de facto birth control for mosquitoes and other winged insects, an insight that could lead to eco-friendly pest control strategies. ...

the presence of garlic blocks mating in mosquitoes and a variety of fly species. ...

the idea that since fruit flies normally mate on fruits, maybe there’s something in fruits or vegetables that acts as an aphrodisiac and stimulates their mating. So, she went to the supermarket and bought 43 different fruits and vegetables. She made purées from each and put them in Petri dishes for the flies to sample. ...

The startling result was that garlic abolished mating completely. It blocked egg-laying, too. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• A “phytoscreen” identifies garlic as a potent deterrent of fly and mosquito behaviors

• Diallyl disulfide, a garlic compound, inhibits mating and egg laying

• Mating and egg-laying effects depend on taste and the TrpA1 channel

• Garlic exposure increases expression of a gene that encodes a satiety hormone

Summary

One means of controlling insect disease vectors and pests is with compounds that manipulate their behavior. An extraordinary variety of phytochemicals, i.e., compounds produced by plants, activate insect chemosensory systems. Fruits and vegetables present a source of compounds that are inexpensive and safe.

A “phytoscreen” of 43 fruits and vegetables identified garlic as a potent deterrent of mating and egg laying in Drosophila. 

Diallyl disulfide, a garlic compound, deters both behaviors. Mating and egg-laying effects depend on taste and the TrpA1 channel. 

Garlic inhibits mating and egg laying in Aedes vector mosquitoes and mating of the tsetse fly Glossina morsitans.

Garlic exposure increases expression of Drosophila head genes, including female-specific independent of transformer (fit), which encodes a satiety hormone that is essential for the effect of garlic on egg-laying preference."

From pantry to pest control: Garlic kills the mood — for mosquitoes, too | Yale News "Yale researchers discovered a naturally occurring compound in garlic that halts mating and egg-laying in insects."

A phytoscreen identifies a garlic compound as a deterrent of mating and egg laying in Drosophila and mosquitoes (no public access)

Graphical abstract

Physicists Discover the Most Complex Forms of Ice Yet

Recommendable! The many wonders of water!

"... Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing list includes hot ice and even ice that conducts electricity. ...

Over the past decade, computer simulations have predicted tens of thousands of possible forms of ice. Though uncommon on our planet, exotic ice may exist in off-Earth environments, from cold and amorphous comet tails to the hot and crushing cores of icy planets.

As physicists put water to the test with improved experimental techniques, they keep finding surprises. “You take water, and just the way you compress it — a little bit faster, a bit slower, up and down, at the right timescale — and then you can find this completely unexpected behavior,” ...

In 2018, an international research group from Europe and Japan created an ambitious computer simulation of the dynamics of water molecules that aimed to predict undiscovered forms of ice. The result was a catalog of over 75,000 phases, each characterized by a slightly different way that the water molecules could fit together when subjected to a different combination of temperature and pressure. ...

In 2025, Bove’s team in Lausanne discovered a smaller but in some ways stranger metastable phase of ice. In a study published in Nature, they reported the first observation of plastic ice VII. This is a variation of ice VII, a high-pressure phase of ice, that appears when the ice is heated to around 500 degrees Celsius. ..."

Physicists Discover the Most Complex Forms of Ice Yet | Quanta Magazine "Scientists keep detecting new forms of ice. According to simulations, there could be many more left to find."

Fig. 1: Phase diagram of the QENS experiment and investigated thermodynamic paths.

a, Experimental phase diagram of water in the investigated P–T region, melting lines are reproduced from refs. 31,43. The region of stability of plastic ice VII from numerical simulations8 is shown with white dashed lines, pressures and temperatures are shifted to match the experimental melting line. The measured thermodynamic points are represented as circles with colours corresponding to the phase attribution (a selection of thermodynamic points from previous experiments34 are represented as squares). Error bars on the pressure determination are of ±0.5 GPa for the high-pressure isobars, whereas they are of 0.1 GPa for the thermodynamic points close to the melting as the melting was used to calibrate the pressure. 

First total synthesis of macrocycle with four stereocentres at the heart of bacterial photosynthesis

Good news! But the abstract of this research is loaded with technical terms.

"After nine years of effort, chemists in the US have completed the first total synthesis of bacteriochlorophyll a, a molecule they describe as ‘one of the most challenging photosynthetic tetrapyrroles to synthesise’. ... approach opens the door to making a wide range of photosynthetic tetrapyrroles and exploring their function ‘in a way that’s not been possible previously’. ...

Photosynthetic tetrapyrroles are organic compounds made up of four pyrrole rings. Common examples are bacteriochlorophyll a and chlorophyll a, the main pigments in anoxygenic and oxygenic photosynthesis, respectively. ..."

"Researchers ... have successfully synthesized bacteriochlorophyll a, a photosynthetic pigment found in bacteria which absorbs infrared light. The work represents the first chemical synthesis of this molecule and could give scientists deeper insights into photosynthetic function and photosynthetic energy. ...

“What we did was synthesize both halves of the macrocycle [made up of rings A,B,C, and D], then use constituents of ring E as the joining site for bringing the two halves together,” ... “When the halves are attached to an atom that will eventually become ring E, a cascade reaction triggers and the molecule self-assembles in the last step.”"

From the abstract:

"Photosynthetic tetrapyrroles absorb light to power the biosphere but have largely been neglected as targets of chemical synthesis.

Bacteriochlorophyll a – a key macrocycle in the bacterial photosynthetic reaction center – contains four stereocenters at the rim of the bacteriochlorin chromophore due to the trans-dialkyl group in each pyrroline ring (B, D), and an epimerizable β-ketoester embedded in the isocyclic ring (E).

Here, each pair of stereodefined vicinal substituents was introduced as a chiral 4-nitroalkanal building block, which was converted to an alkynone for subsequent coupling with an iodopyrrole (A, C), affording the AD and BC dihydrodipyrrins. The dihydrodipyrrins were equipped with reactive groups (1-formyl, AD-half; 1-(1,1-dimethoxymethyl) and 8-(3-methoxy-1,3-dioxopropyl, BC-half) suited for directed macrocycle formation.

Knoevenagel condensation of AD and BC halves afforded a propenone, the nexus for constructing ring E concomitantly with the macrocycle in the subsequent one-flask, double-ring closure (Nazarov cyclization, electrophilic aromatic substitution, elimination of methanol).

The aromatic bacteriopheophorbide was obtained as the 2-trimethylsilylethyl propanoate, which upon acidolysis and esterification with phytol yielded bacteriopheophytin a; subsequent magnesiation gave bacteriochlorophyll a.

The modularity of the synthesis, straightforward construction of asymmetric building blocks, and convergent joining of AD and BC halves suggest that the present route may provide an entrée into diverse photosynthetic macrocycles."

First total synthesis of macrocycle with four stereocentres at the heart of bacterial photosynthesis | Research | Chemistry World

Researchers Synthesize Photosynthetic Molecule Found in Bacteria (original news release)

Synthesis of bacteriochlorophyll a (open access)

Bacteriochlorophyll a is the most common photosynthetic pigment in anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria, and plays significant roles in light-harvesting, energy-migrating and electron-transporting reactions

How rocks remove CO2 from the atmosphere

Amazing stuff! Nature captures/binds much more CO2 than previously thought! Climate models are junk!

More evidence that global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion!

We still know far too little about the highly complex natural phenomenon called climate! Climate change has become a major subject for demagogues and profiteers!

"Rocks can bind carbon dioxide — and much faster than previously thought. For a long time, it was assumed that the transformation of CO2 into carbonate rock depends on very slow, time-consuming processes. According to that view, the binding of CO2 injected industrially into the ground would take centuries. However, practical observations and theoretical calculations suggested that there may also be a much faster route from CO2 to carbonate, mediated by water acting somewhat like a catalyst. This suspected mechanism has now been demonstrated for the first time at TU Wien, using imaging techniques on the atomic scale. ...

The “bent” carbon dioxide molecule can then attach directly to the wollastonite, forming a stable bond — without the wollastonite having to dissolve first. “Without water, this is not possible, because the right docking site is missing,” says Giada Franceschi. “But even a tiny amount of water is enough to completely change the interaction between CO2 and wollastonite.” ..."

From the abstract:

"The carbonation of silicate minerals is a key process in the Earth’s carbon cycle and offers a promising avenue for long-term CO2 sequestration. However, the atomistic mechanisms by which CO2 is activated at silicate surfaces remain poorly understood, largely due to the intrinsic complexity and insulating nature of these materials.

To close this gap, wollastonite (CaSiO3) is used as a model system. Noncontact atomic force microscopy (nc-AFM) with functionalized tips is combined with density functional theory (DFT) to investigate its lowest-energy (100) surface under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV).

Upon cleaving the mineral in UHV, water vapor is released from the sample and spontaneously readsorbs into a previously unreported, exceptionally stable configuration.

The resulting surface hydration layer promotes spontaneous CO2 chemisorption and the formation of surface carbonates with negligible kinetic barriers.

Our results offer atomic-scale evidence of gas–phase carbonation on a silicate mineral, revealing a water-assisted pathway for CO2 capture that bypasses aqueous mineral dissolution."

How rock removes CO2 from the atmosphere | EurekAlert! "A remarkable mineralogical mechanism has now been demonstrated at TU Wien: with the help of water, certain minerals can convert CO2 into solid carbonate very quickly."

Molecular Views of Mineral Carbonation: Reaction of CO2 with the Wollastonite (100) Surface (open access)

Credits: CO₂ verschwindet schneller im Gestein als gedacht

Graphical abstract