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Materials chemistry involves the use of chemistry for the design and synthesis of materials with interesting or potentially useful physical characteristics, such as magnetic, optical, structural or catalytic properties. It also involves the characterization, processing and molecular-level understanding of these substances.
Anisotropic gels made from supramolecular nanofibres are formed from mechanical or magnetic forces applied with orchestrated enzymatically-triggered pH changes.
PEDOT:PSS is a conductive polymer with potential as electrodes in flexible electronics, but conductivity is not always satisfactory. Here, the authors report the use of dodecyl sulfate in place of polystyrene sulfonate to prepare a durable and conductive film with large crystal domains.
Self-healing in structurally ordered materials is restricted by slow interfacial mass transport and the need for ideal physical alignment. Here the authors show self-healing in an anilinium bromide crystals achieving up to 95% recovery through ferroelastic detwinning.
Microscopic reaction pathways are crucial for electrochemical performance, but manipulating them remains challenging. Here, the authors report an approach that involves integrating Mn into RuO2 catalysts to switch the reaction mechanism of the oxygen evolution reaction from a traditional single metal-site adsorbate evolution mechanism to a different dual-metal-site oxide path mechanism.
Although the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still unknown, imbalanced antioxidant capacity in nerve cells is a successfully targeted pathological phenomenon in clinical practice. Here, the authors show that the complementary surface electrostatic potential between a metal-organic framework and curcumin results in a complex with good antioxidant activity and efficient β-amyloid plaque scavenging ability, which slows down the cognitive dysfunction in the brain of AD mice.
Metal-organic frameworks are promising materials for hosting functional biomolecules. Here, a 3D europium metal-organic framework could split into a 2D one upon solvent addition and re-cross-link to 3D with excess solvent which can host enzymes as a biocatalyst.
Anisotropic gels made from supramolecular nanofibres are formed from mechanical or magnetic forces applied with orchestrated enzymatically-triggered pH changes.
An article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reports porous photocatalytic nanowires that extract record amounts of uranium from seawater, a step closer to tapping the ocean’s vast uranium reserves for nuclear energy.
Photocatalytic overall water splitting (OWS) is highly desirable for hydrogen production but challenging owing to rapid charge recombination. We demonstrate a dynamic metal–organic framework (MOF) photocatalyst that achieves OWS via one-step photoexcitation. Upon excitation by light, the MOF undergoes a structural twist that suppresses charge recombination and achieves OWS.
Constructing ordered triatomic-layer borate polyanion terminations in MXenes substantially enhances their chemical stability and electrochemical energy storage. The development of such ordered terminations with complex configurations largely expands the design space for MXenes.
The ligand–nanoparticle interface helps to control nanoparticle synthesis and functional properties, but determining its structure and dynamics is challenging owing to the lack of high-resolution direct imaging methods. Now, liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy has uncovered the micellar packing and surface adsorption dynamics of a surfactant ligand on gold nanorods.
