Chemical engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mass fabrication of supraparticles is essential for their applications, but it is not easy. Tan et al. produce porous supraparticles with tunable shapes by drying colloidal particles in water-ethanol-oil ternary drops, where the pining effect at drop edges is alleviated by the formation of oil rings.

    • Huanshu Tan
    • , Sanghyuk Wooh
    •  & Detlef Lohse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Enhancing the catalytic activity of noble-metal alloys is frequently accompanied by side reactions. Here, the authors describe an approach to break the scaling relationship for propane dehydrogenation, by assembling single atom alloys, to achieve simultaneous enhancement of propylene selectivity and propane conversion.

    • Guodong Sun
    • , Zhi-Jian Zhao
    •  & Jinlong Gong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing n-type colloidal quantum dot materials easily lose their doping polarity in air. Here Song et al. passivate the reactive covalent surface of indium arsenide quantum dots to gain the energy-level tunability and show p–n junction type solar cells with 7.92% certified efficiency.

    • Jung Hoon Song
    • , Hyekyoung Choi
    •  & Sohee Jeong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the location and nature of the catalytic active site is critical for controlling a catalyst’s activity and selectivity. Here, the authors separate the metal from the support by a controlled distance while maintaining the ability to promote defects via the use of carbon nanotube hydrogen highways.

    • Nicholas M. Briggs
    • , Lawrence Barrett
    •  & Steven P. Crossley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selective conversion of CO2 and H2 into aromatics remains challenging due to the high unsaturation degree and complex structure of aromatics. Here the authors report a composite catalyst of ZnAlOx and H-ZSM-5 which promotes the formation of aromatics with high selectivity while inhibiting CO and CH4 formation in CO2 hydrogenation reactions.

    • Youming Ni
    • , Zhiyang Chen
    •  & Zhongmin Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supercooled water is susceptible to spontaneous freezing, and preventing this process is a challenge. Here, the authors use surface sealing with immiscible liquids to eliminate primary ice nucleation at the water/air interface, enabling deep supercooling of large volumes of water and red cell suspensions for long time periods.

    • Haishui Huang
    • , Martin L. Yarmush
    •  & O. Berk Usta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The synthesis of polyethylene furanoate, a promising renewable resource-based bioplastic, still has challenges. Here the authors show that bottle-grade polyethylene furanoate can be obtained within minutes from ring-opening polymerisation of its cyclic oligomers, thereby avoiding degradation and discolouration.

    • Jan-Georg Rosenboom
    • , Diana Kay Hohl
    •  & Massimo Morbidelli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The notoriously slow kinetics in CO2 desorption hinders the development of efficient CO2 capture technologies. Here, the authors discover that nanostructured TiO(OH)2 as a catalyst is capable of dramatically increasing the rates of CO2 desorption from spent monoethanolamine.

    • Qinghua Lai
    • , Sam Toan
    •  & Maohong Fan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While renewable energy production is a terrestrial concern, far less attention is devoted to solar-to-fuel conversion for long-term space missions. Here, the authors explore photoelectrochemical hydrogen generation in microgravity and overcome microgravity’s limitations by electrode nanostructuring.

    • Katharina Brinkert
    • , Matthias H. Richter
    •  & Hans-Joachim Lewerenz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Graphene shows great promise for gas separation applications, but obtaining large membranes that are free of cracks and tears remains highly challenging. Here, the authors realize monolayer, crack-free, millimeter-scale graphene membranes that exhibit selective gas permeation solely thanks to their intrinsic defects

    • Shiqi Huang
    • , Mostapha Dakhchoune
    •  & Kumar Varoon Agrawal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fabrication of porous nanoparticles is often hampered by low efficiency production methods, challenging isolation of the material and poor control over the fabrication process. Here the authors demonstrate a facile ice-template vapor-phase synthesis which allows for production of porous poly-para-xylylene particles on a large scale.

    • Hsing-Ying Tung
    • , Zhen-Yu Guan
    •  & Hsien-Yeh Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Palladium supported on zeolite is a highly active catalyst for complete methane oxidation, but its stability needs to be improved. Here, the authors design a highly active catalyst resistant to steam-induced sintering under reaction conditions by alleviating the high mobility of palladium nanoparticles and zeolite degradation.

    • Andrey W. Petrov
    • , Davide Ferri
    •  & Oliver Kröcher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The economic operation of a carbon dioxide capture technique of calcium looping necessitates highly effective CaO-based CO2 sorbents. Here, the authors report a facile one-pot synthesis approach to yield highly effective, MgO-stabilized, CaO-based CO2 sorbents featuring highly porous multishelled morphologies.

    • Muhammad Awais Naeem
    • , Andac Armutlulu
    •  & Christoph R. Müller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanofiltration membranes are important for water desalination technologies, but designing membranes that achieve both high permeance and high salt rejection remains challenging. Here, the authors use sacrificial nanoparticles in the membrane fabrication process, leading to crumpled structures with ultrahigh permeance.

    • Zhenyi Wang
    • , Zhangxin Wang
    •  & Jian Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active particles that demonstrate life-like behavior may find use in bio-inspired technologies, but achieving on-demand reconfiguration remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate controllable, collective behavior in silicon microparticles, which are fabricated via conventional semiconductor methods.

    • Ugonna Ohiri
    • , C. Wyatt Shields IV
    •  & Nan Jokerst

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solvent recovery is an important process in the pharmaceutical industry, but organic solvent nanofiltration membranes operate under high pressures. Here the authors demonstrate organic solvent forward osmosis — an alternative process that does not require application of external pressure and may prove to be economically favorable.

    • Yue Cui
    •  & Tai-Shung Chung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding host–guest interactions and structural changes within porous materials is crucial for enhancing gas storage properties. Here, the authors combine cryogenic loading of gases with high pressure crystallography and computational techniques to obtain atomistic detail of adsorption-induced structural and energetic changes in ZIF-8.

    • Claire L. Hobday
    • , Christopher H. Woodall
    •  & Stephen A. Moggach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The oxidative dehydrogenation of propane by CO2 (CO2-ODHP) can potentially fill the gap of propylene production while consuming a greenhouse gas. Here, the authors identify non-precious FeNi and precious NiPt catalysts supported on CeO2 as promising catalysts for CO2-ODHP and dry reforming, respectively, in flow reactor studies.

    • Elaine Gomez
    • , Shyam Kattel
    •  & Jingguang G. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emergence of thousands of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has created the challenge of finding promising structures for particular applications. Here, the authors present a tool for computer-aided material discovery where a large number of MOFs are screened, with the top-ranked structure synthesized for oxygen storage applications.

    • Peyman Z. Moghadam
    • , Timur Islamoglu
    •  & David Fairen-Jimenez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Harvesting water from the atmosphere is an important solution to water scarcity, but doing so in arid climates is highly challenging. Here, the authors develop a metal-organic framework-based water harvesting device that can deliver over 0.25 L of water per kg of adsorbent over a single cycle at relative humidities of 10–40% and at subzero dew points.

    • Hyunho Kim
    • , Sameer R. Rao
    •  & Evelyn N. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous membranes show great promise for CO2 separation and capture, but are currently limited by a trade-off between permeance and selectivity. Here, the authors fabricate a bio-inspired, ultra-thin enzymatic liquid membrane that displays exceptional CO2 permeability and selectivity under ambient conditions.

    • Yaqin Fu
    • , Ying-Bing Jiang
    •  & C. Jeffrey Brinker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Improving the efficiency of gas separation technology is needed, since existing methods represent a significant portion of the world’s energy consumption. Here, the authors report an enhancement in the release rate of carbon dioxide and oxygen using a counter-current amplification method inspired by fish.

    • Kyle Brubaker
    • , Armand Garewal
    •  & Aaron P. Esser-Kahn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intrinsic limitations of nanoporous graphene limit its applications in water treatment. Here the authors produce post-treatment-free, low-cost graphene-based membranes from renewable biomass and demonstrate their high water permeance and antifouling properties using real seawater.

    • Dong Han Seo
    • , Shafique Pineda
    •  & Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-dimensional materials show great potential for membrane technologies, but their disordered channels hinder their molecular sieving performance. Here, Wang, Gogotsi and colleagues design a MXene membrane with ordered nanochannels that exhibits an excellent H2/CO2 gas separation performance.

    • Li Ding
    • , Yanying Wei
    •  & Yury Gogotsi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Poor adherence to daily antiretrovirals can significantly affect treatment efficacy, but oral long-acting antiretrovirals are currently lacking. Here, the authors develop a once-weekly oral dosage form for anti-HIV drugs, assess its pharmacokinetics in pigs, and model its impact on viral resistance and disease epidemics.

    • Ameya R. Kirtane
    • , Omar Abouzid
    •  & Giovanni Traverso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Emulsions—stabilized mixtures of immiscible liquids—are found in many products, ranging from pharmaceuticals to food. Here Guha et al. propose a simple emulsification method where water vapor is condensed onto oil with surfactant, producing a water-in-oil emulsion with droplets as small as 100 nm.

    • Ingrid F. Guha
    • , Sushant Anand
    •  & Kripa K. Varanasi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monomer sequence is an emerging tool to precisely encode information (and thus structure and function) into polymer systems. Here the authors use sequence-control in complex coacervates to understand how monomer sequence translates to physical material properties.

    • Li-Wei Chang
    • , Tyler K. Lytle
    •  & Sarah L. Perry

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coating porous membranes with nanoparticles can enhance their separation and antifouling properties, but methods to do so remain complex. Here, Lee and colleagues use solvent transfer-induced phase separation to prepare nanoparticle-functionalized hollow fiber membranes from bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels.

    • Martin F. Haase
    • , Harim Jeon
    •  & Daeyeon Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Implementing a nucleic acid preconcentration method can improve the sensitivity of microfluidic analysis systems. Here Friedrich et al. concentrate DNA by many orders of magnitude using pressure-driven flow, which could lead to a simple and practical microanalysis platform.

    • Sarah M. Friedrich
    • , Jeffrey M. Burke
    •  & Tza-Huei Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spider-silk-mimicking microfibers often suffer from low efficiency and durability in water collection. Here, the authors fabricate robust microfibers with spindle cavity-knots and different topological fiber-networks with improved water-collecting performance

    • Ye Tian
    • , Pingan Zhu
    •  & Liqiu Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Producing graphene oxide membranes with narrow channels is desirable for small molecule separations, but methods to narrow the 2D spacing typically result in membrane damage. Here the authors exploit electrophoresis-deposition to prepare GO membranes that are reduced in situ, leading to narrow and uniform 2D channels.

    • Benyu Qi
    • , Xiaofan He
    •  & Yuhan Sun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Producing hydrogen peroxide via electrochemical oxidation of water is an attractive route to this valuable product. Here the authors theoretically and experimentally investigate hydrogen peroxide production activity trends for a range of metal oxides and identify the optimal bias ranges for high Faraday efficiencies.

    • Xinjian Shi
    • , Samira Siahrostami
    •  & Jens K. Nørskov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cells contain isolated compartments where cascade enzymatic biochemical reactions occur to form essential biological products with high efficiency. Here the authors produce functional hydrogel particles with multiple compartments via microfluidics that contain spatially immobilized natural enzymes in distinct domains for one-pot, tandem reactions.

    • Hongliang Tan
    • , Song Guo
    •  & Chia-Hung Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    MOF-based membranes have shown great promise in separation applications, but producing thin membranes that allow for high fluxes remains challenging. Here, the authors use a gel–vapour deposition strategy to fabricate composite membranes with less than 20 nm thicknesses and high gas permeances and selectivities.

    • Wanbin Li
    • , Pengcheng Su
    •  & Eddy Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Serpentinization of mantle rocks occurs in a variety of tectonic settings, but the controls on the rates of serpentinization are poorly constrained. Here, the authors developed anin situexperimental method to show that the rate of serpentinization is strongly controlled by the salinity of the reacting fluid.

    • Hector M. Lamadrid
    • , J. Donald Rimstidt
    •  & Robert J. Bodnar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    2D nanomaterials are promising capacitive energy storage materials, but their tendency to restack hinders electrolyte transport. Here, Yamauchi and colleagues introduce 2D ordered mesoporous carbons in between MXene layers, and metal removal affords all-carbon porous 2D–2D heterostructures in which restacking is prevented.

    • Jie Wang
    • , Jing Tang
    •  & Yusuke Yamauchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Regulating guest access and release in porous materials remains an important goal. Here, May and colleagues elucidate the mechanism by which guest admission can be temperature-regulated in typical microporous materials, and experimentally exploit this process to achieve appreciable and reversible hydrogen storage.

    • Gang (Kevin) Li
    • , Jin Shang
    •  & Eric F. May

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water treatment processes mostly rely on the use of membranes and filters, which have high pumping costs and require periodic replacement. Here, the authors describe an efficient membraneless method that induces directed motion of suspended colloidal particles by exposing the suspension to CO2.

    • Sangwoo Shin
    • , Orest Shardt
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Direct hydrogenation of CO2 into liquid fuels can mitigate CO2 emissions and reduce the rapid depletion of fossil fuels. Here, the authors show an iron-based multifunctional catalyst that converts CO2to gasoline with high selectivity due to synergistic cooperation of multiple catalytic active sites.

    • Jian Wei
    • , Qingjie Ge
    •  & Jian Sun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In order to fully utilize sulfur vacancies in MoS2 catalysts for industrial applications, a facile and general route for making sulfur vacancies in MoS2 is needed. Here, the authors introduce a scalable route towards generating sulfur vacancies on the MoS2basal plane using electrochemical desulfurization.

    • Charlie Tsai
    • , Hong Li
    •  & Frank Abild-Pedersen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Droplet manipulation is an essential task for designing microfluidic platforms such as lab-on-chip devices. Here Tanget al. develop a non-wettable mesh with reversible liquid adhesion controlled by mechanically inserting wettable pillars which allows for effective and rapid droplet manoeuvring.

    • Xin Tang
    • , Pingan Zhu
    •  & Liqiu Wang

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