Materials science, chemistry and energy research.
Researchers developed an AI-powered pipeline that extracts information about concrete materials from scientific papers and organizes it into a database. Applied to a corpus screened from more than 27,000 publications, the system produced nearly 9,000 records for an open database on blended cement concrete.
Researchers report that individual lanthanide-doped nanocrystals can blink collectively, even though each contains thousands of light-emitting ions. The long-lasting, high-contrast blinking enabled low-power microscopy that localized particles with a mean precision of 1.2 nanometers.
Researchers mapped how the drug BMS-644950 can break down under acidic conditions, separating likely products from chemical changes that are possible but too slow to observe. The calculations identified two known lactone products as dominant and proposed a structure for a previously uncharacterised impurity.
A new all-solid-state electrochromic window lowered indoor temperatures by about 9.5°C in outdoor testing. It retained more than 85% of its initial near-infrared light modulation after 10,000 switching cycles.
Researchers made cellulose-based paper sheets more stretchable by partially modifying their fibers and then using moisture to soften the material. The treated sheets reached 12% strainability and could be formed into simple three-dimensional structures.
Researchers used nitrogen and carbon dioxide plasma to modify copper oxide nanostructures on a copper mesh. At −1.2 volts, the catalyst produced carbon-based products including acetic acid, ethanol and propanol, with more than 70% faradaic efficiency for products containing two or more carbon atoms.
Researchers developed an iron-based cathode for protonic ceramic fuel cells that reached a peak power density of 2.2 W/cm² at 700 °C. The cell also operated stably for more than 400 hours, according to the study.
Researchers report that a biodegradable plastic film containing 10% cetyltrimethylammonium bromide could be depolymerized in a dilute sodium hydroxide solution. Microwave heating reduced the treatment time from six hours to two minutes, producing lactic acid and sodium lactate; activated carbon removed residual cetyltrimethylammonium bromide afterward.
Researchers have introduced a curated database containing more than 30,000 entries on solid-state hydrogen-storage materials, drawn from over 4,000 experimental literature sources. The database includes storage capacity and key heat- and disorder-related properties, giving researchers a way to compare materials under different operating conditions.
Researchers report a nickel-iron catalyst that sustained water electrolysis for more than 3,400 hours at an industrial current density. The reported hydrogen production cost was $2.28 per kilogram, below the European Commission’s 2030 target.
A study in Nature Communications found that many imine reductases and reductive aminases can make chiral amines from equal amounts of the starting materials. Screening and an AI system helped identify enzymes with broad activity, and selected reactions produced gram quantities of optically pure products.
Researchers developed Orbformer, an AI model that learns transferable descriptions of molecules from 22,000 structures, including molecules with breaking bonds. After fine-tuning, it reached chemical accuracy on established tests and more demanding bond-breaking and Diels–Alder reaction problems, while reducing the need to solve each new molecule from scratch.
A compact near-infrared device uses lead-free perovskite materials to screen alcohol and water content in commercial samples. Its circuit turns optical signals into five visual levels, covering alcohol concentrations of 30–60% and water contents of 45–100%.
Nanopore confinement enabled delayed fluorescence in crystalline organic frameworks, allowing them to use energy that would otherwise be lost through non-emissive triplet states. The resulting materials formed high-efficiency light-emitting films and were used in solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes, although the abstract does not report detailed performance figures.
A solar still fitted with rotating aluminum discs produced 24% more desalinated water than a drum-based still and 310% more than a standard passive still in experiments. Estimated water costs ranged from 8.2 to 10.3 cents per liter, with projected payback periods under seven months.
