Chemistry

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found organic molecules that have never been seen before on Mars. A rock that the rover drilled and analyzed in 2020 includes the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars, NASA announced last week. Of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample, seven of them had never…

Ryan Davis and Nathan Bays, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories, set out to find a better way to absorb and degrade per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water sources, but quickly discovered that detecting the chemicals in the water took too long. They pivoted and have developed a faster, cheaper way to test for PFAS…

MXenes, a family of two-dimensional transition metal carbides and nitrides, have drawn interest for applications including EMI shielding, energy storage, electrocatalysis and high-speed optoelectronics. But a persistent surface chemistry problem has limited their performance. Standard synthesis routes typically leave MXene surfaces with a disordered mix of oxygen, hydroxyl and fluorine terminations, which can trap and…

Carbamazepine, a common antiepileptic, is frequently detected in surface water, groundwater and drinking water, where it can induce toxic effects in aquatic organisms and potentially impact human health through long-term exposure. Conventional treatment technologies are often inefficient, have high energy demands or cause secondary pollution when addressing persistent compounds such as pharmaceutical contaminants. Current advanced…

When a new homeowner in Southwest Michigan posted a photo of a vintage can of ethyl ether found in their basement to a large online chemistry forum on Reddit, the poster was just looking for cheap disposal advice. What they got instead was a chorus of terrified chemists and former hazardous waste technicians telling them…

At least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. A 2023 UNODC assessment estimated 267,000 deaths per year from falsified antimalarials alone in sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 170,000 more from counterfeit antibiotics. In the U.S., the problem is smaller in scale but growing: the CDC has warned about counterfeit…

An international group of researchers discovered three fungal proteins that can catalyze ice formation at high subzero temperatures. They published their findings in Science Advances. This discovery could enable scientists to engineer weather. The proteins were found in three fungal species: Mortierella alpina, Entomortierella parvispora and Podila clonocystis. Particles called ice nucleators, which can trigger…

Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Kentucky established a microbial platform that produces oxalic acid and purifies rare-earth elements. They published their findings in Nature Communications.  The current process for refining rare-earth elements is complex and intensive. The supply chain is dominated by China, as…

Scientists have designed and developed a proprietary non-precious metal oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalyst featuring a layered structure optimized for anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) environments. The study proposes a novel catalyst design strategy capable of simultaneously achieving high efficiency and durability while reducing reliance on expensive precious metal catalysts.  AEMWE operates under alkaline…

U.S. employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January 2026, the highest January total since 2009 and a 118% jump from the same month last year. But the headline number, driven largely by UPS shedding 30,000 workers after severing ties with Amazon and Amazon’s own 16,000-person management restructuring, obscures what’s happening underneath in R&D-intensive industries. Healthcare…

Researchers found that a species of ant called Sericomyrmex amabilis directly converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into a mineral armor that coats their exoskeletons. This species is the first known animal to produce partially ordered dolomite.  The mineral layer is 7 to 20 micrometers thick and covers almost the entire body of mature worker ants, except…

Researchers reported in Nature that they have engineered proteins to emit light in response to a combination of weak magnetic fields and pulses of energy at radio frequencies. This could set the stage for tracking proteins in the body with MRI-like instruments with less powerful magnets. The technology could allow researchers to track disease-linked proteins…

Researchers at Nanjing University published a new study in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes describing a method for treating perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in water. By introducing a small amount of formic acid into a UV-activated persulfate system, the researchers increased defluorination from 27% to 89% in 24 hours. The best results required acidic conditions (pH 2.5),…

In 1986, Leonard Rome and Nancy Kedersha discovered vaults, barrel-shaped particles made naturally by human cells, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Despite studying the particles since their discovery, Rome and other scientists have failed to find their purpose. Now, scientists at the Broad Institute are using the mysterious structures to record the…

For 139 years, the Coca-Cola formula has been the gold standard of trade-secret-based intellectual property. A trade secret so guarded it became modern mythology. But this January, a YouTuber with a borrowed mass spectrometer technology offered a recipe that he says is a near replica that one can make at home. Zach Armstrong (aka “LabCoatz”)…

An international research team led by scientists from the University of Rostock, CNRS-École Polytechnique in France, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has discovered a previously unknown form of superionic water. The team experimentally discovered a highly electrically conductive phase at the European XFEL X-ray laser near Hamburg, Germany, and the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC…

Scientists pumped approximately 16,200 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine. It was the final phase of a study on a climate intervention that could simultaneously mitigate global warming and ocean acidification.  Earth’s oceans absorb about one-third of human carbon emissions. However, as this carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean, it reacts with…

DuPont’s Tychem 6000 SFR garment (pictured) earned an R&D 100 Award for solving a longstanding trade-off in protective clothing: chemical resistance versus flame protection. Previously, workers in oil and gas, petrochemical and chemical manufacturing had to choose one or the other, or layer garments and deal with significant heat stress. The Tychem 6000 SFR provides…

DuPont Water Solutions’ FilmTec Fortilife XC160 membrane, a 2025 R&D 100 Award winner in the Mechanical/Materials category, tackles a challenge traditional reverse osmosis can’t: concentrating wastewater streams up to 16% salt. At that salinity, osmotic pressure overwhelms conventional membranes, but the XC160’s underlying technology, developed over a decade and refined while awaiting scale-up, handles it.…

Researchers at Chonnam National University in South Korea have engineered an enzyme cascade that converts formaldehyde into L-glyceraldehyde, a chiral compound used as a building block in pharmaceutical synthesis and in routes to specialty sugars. The one-pot process runs in water under mild conditions and reached roughly 94% conversion efficiency, pointing to a potential approach…

Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for the creation of molecular structures with spaces large enough for gases and other chemicals to flow through. These structures are called metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and can be used to harvest water from the air, capture carbon dioxide,…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory was named on 20 of the 2025 R&D 100 Awards, 17 as lead developer and three as co-developer.  The showing sets a new record for the lab, accounting for about one-fifth of all winners. Since the 1980s, ORNL has won more than 260 R&D 100 Awards Our sister publication engineering.com recently…

Richard Tapper, an Associate Research Specialist at Dow and the 2025 R&D Technician of the Year, sums up his test philosophy in visceral terms: “I work on fire-retardant materials, and when I approach a test, I am considering that this cable is on fire in my house. So, I am going to view the test…

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory built a first: berkelocene. It binds carbon to berkelium-249 and puts the atom between two substituted cyclooctatetraene-based ligands. The surprise? In this molecule, berkelium is tetravalent (Bk⁴⁺), not Tb-like as many models predicted. In plain terms: the berkelium atom ends up more positively charged than expected and bonds to…

Elsevier, founded in 1880, is going all in on AI and data. In addition to publishing, Elsevier now offers several databases, learning resources and AI tools all aimed at supporting researchers. The latest release in this vein is a new AI-powered search engine for its chemistry database, Reaxys, which represents a fresh take on its…