Imaging techniques articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • Article |

    Accessing longer-wavelength emitting organic fluorophores is critical for diagnostic imaging. Here a series of silicon-RosIndolizine fluorophores with emission maxima at 1,300 nm, 1,550 nm and 1,700 nm were synthesized. The fluorophores generate high-resolution in vivo fluorescence images in mice and establish design principles for future shortwave-infrared fluorophore designs.

    • William E. Meador
    • , Eric Y. Lin
    •  & Jared H. Delcamp

  • Article |

    The design of open-shell nanographenes is commonly limited to systems featuring a single magnetic origin. Now a strategy that combines topological frustration and electron–electron interactions has been developed to generate a butterfly-shaped nanographene that hosts four highly entangled π-spins and exhibits both ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic coupling.

    • Shaotang Song
    • , Andrés Pinar Solé
    •  & Jiong Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Switching the magnetic state of a polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbon in a reversible and controlled manner is challenging. Now, by means of single-molecule scanning probe microscopy, an indenofluorene isomer on ultrathin NaCl films has been shown to adopt both open- and closed-shell states. Furthermore, bidirectional switching between the two states is achieved by changing the adsorption site of the molecule.

    • Shantanu Mishra
    • , Manuel Vilas-Varela
    •  & Leo Gross

  • Article |

    Sequences of synthetic polymers are generally heterogeneous and dictate many of their physiochemical properties, but are challenging to determine. Now an imaging method, termed CREATS (coupled reaction approach toward super-resolution imaging), can count, localize and identify each monomer of single polymer chains during (co)polymerization.

    • Rong Ye
    • , Xiangcheng Sun
    •  & Peng Chen

  • Research Briefing |

    A multimodal imaging approach is developed to interrogate microorganism–semiconductor biohybrids at the single-cell and single-molecule level for light-driven CO2 fixation. Application to lithoautotrophic bacterium Ralstonia eutropha biohybrids reveals the roles of two hydrogenases in electron transport and bioplastic formation, the magnitude of semiconductor-to-single-cell electron transport and the associated pathways.

  • Article |

    Understanding interfacial and cellular electron transport is essential for guiding efficiency optimization in microbe–semiconductor biohybrids for energy conversion. A multimodal imaging platform that combines optical imaging and photocurrent mapping can now interrogate such electron-transport pathways at the single-cell level, uncovering different roles of hydrogenases and a microbe’s large electron-uptake capacity.

    • Bing Fu
    • , Xianwen Mao
    •  & Peng Chen

  • Article |

    Visualizing single-molecule reactions using electron microscopy can be difficult because of potential radiation damage from the electron beam. Now, however, it has been shown that a high-energy electron beam can be used to synthesize metallo-azafullerenes. Atomic-resolution, time-resolved transmission electron microscopy, with the help of computational calculations, is used to monitor the metal-encapsulation dynamics.

    • Helen Hoelzel
    • , Sol Lee
    •  & Dominik Lungerich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structural analysis of small crystals has remained challenging. Now, the structure of a small organic molecule, rhodamine-6G, has been resolved from microcrystals using an X-ray free-electron laser and electron diffraction. The former showed better reliability for atomic coordinates, whereas the latter was more sensitive to charges; both techniques accurately determined the position of hydrogen atoms.

    • Kiyofumi Takaba
    • , Saori Maki-Yonekura
    •  & Koji Yonekura

  • Article |

    Nature uses out-of-equilibrium systems to control hierarchical assembly. Now, a dissipative chemical system has been shown to slowly release monomer DNA strands from a high-energy reservoir, regulating self-assembly by switching the mechanism of supramolecular polymerization at the single-molecule level. This process heals fibre defects, converting branched, heterogeneous networks into nanocable superstructures.

    • Felix J. Rizzuto
    • , Casey M. Platnich
    •  & Hanadi F. Sleiman

  • Article |

    Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques can interrogate entities that fluoresce; however, most chemical or biological processes do not involve fluorescent species. Now, the incorporation of a competitive reaction into a single-molecule fluorescence detection scheme has been shown to enable quantitative super-resolution imaging of non-fluorescent reactions.

    • Xianwen Mao
    • , Chunming Liu
    •  & Peng Chen

  • Article |

    The Bergman cyclization is a fascinating rearrangement reaction with implications beyond organic chemistry. It has now been shown that a reversible Bergman cyclization reaction in a single molecule sitting on an ultrathin NaCl film can be triggered and directly imaged using atomic force microscopy. The interconverted diradical and diyne products are shown to have distinct chemical and physical properties.

    • Bruno Schuler
    • , Shadi Fatayer
    •  & Leo Gross

  • Article |

    Understanding the nature of complex zeolite particles, used as catalysts in industrial reactors, is vital for their further development. Now, an integrated approach to visualizing granules of a hierarchical MFI-type zeolite, on length scales from nanometres to millimetres, is reported.

    • Sharon Mitchell
    • , Nina-Luisa Michels
    •  & Javier Pérez-Ramírez

  • Article |

    Larmor precession of a quantum mechanical angular momentum vector about an applied magnetic field forms the basis for NMR spectroscopy, MRI and a range of other important analytical techniques. This precessional motion has now been imaged for the first time, using velocity-map imaging in a model system of strongly polarized oxygen atoms.

    • Shiou-Min Wu
    • , Dragana Č. Radenovic
    •  & Richard N. Zare

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