physical-chemistry

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 25 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41557-026-02159-w Organic triplet excitons are ‘dark states’, rendering direct photoexcitation from the ground state and efficient phosphorescence difficult. Now it has been shown that attaching chromophores to lanthanide-doped nanocrystals enables spin-exchange-mediated direct triplet excitation and nanosecond-timescale, oxygen-insens…

I’m trying to create professional-looking molecular polarity diagrams in LaTeX (using TikZ or chemfig if possible). I need help sketching the partial charges cloud distribution for the following ...

Formally: Completing a PhD on the biophysical chemistry of nucleotides via molecular dynamics. Informally: A big fan of types, categories, and abstraction. Bad at algebra, but unwilling to quit trying. Having a grand time studying novel foundations of modern physics.

The eco-friendly gas C4F7N has emerged as a promising alternative to SF6 for online monitoring in gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) high-voltage (HV) electrical systems, but partial discharges-an inherent issue in such environments-cause C4F7N decomposition, generating byproducts like CF3CN. This study employs first-principles calculations to systematically investigate the adsorption and electronic …

Abstract Resource constraints in analytical chemistry education often limit students’ opportunities to practise with advanced instrumentation. This exploratory study investigated third-year undergraduate chemistry students’ perceptions of, and engagement with, a newly developed virtual reality (VR) application—Immersive ChemLab—featuring a digital twin of an Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) i…

Gold doesn’t tarnish like similar metals do. A new paper says that the key is the intricate “herringbone” pattern of its atoms.

Materials exhibiting efficient nonlinear optical properties, such as two-photon absorption (2PA), are of increasing interest for applications including biomedical imaging, optical data storage, and long-range communications. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) provide a versatile platform for enhancing such 2PA responses by allowing specific ordered arrangements of chromophores. In particular, organi…

Nature Communications, Published online: 21 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-73177-y Elucidating the structural evolution of photoinduced molecular aggregation in solution remains challenging. Zhu et al. employ persulfurated arenes as a model system to characterize this process, introducing an electrical approach for probing photoresponsive aggregation at the single-molecule level.

In discussions of emergence, particularly in chemistry, isomers are often given as an example of an emergent phenomenon. In Anderson's original "More is Different" article, he discussed the chirality of sugar molecules as an example of symmetry breaking. More recently, isomers (and the associated concept of molecular structure) are invoked to justify contentious claims about strong emergence and …

Nature, Published online: 20 May 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00430-1 From improving battery technology to speeding up reaction times, these innovative scientists are making their mark.

When N atoms get close together and form a much more complex structure, we get N binding orbitals and N antibonding orbitals. The property of the bonding orbitals is that if we filled them up the ...

Abstract Excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) plays a pivotal role in governing the photophysical behaviour of benzazole-based fluorophores. However, the synergistic effects of heteroatom identity, substituent electronic properties and solvent polarity remain insufficiently understood. Here, we use density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT calculations to investigate …

Abstract A guided, stepwise thermodynamic analysis of the ammonia synthesis reaction is presented in the form of a multipart student problem with an accompanying guided computational solution. The activity is designed to strengthen student understanding of chemical potentials ( µ ), Gibbs ( G ), and Helmholtz ( A ) free energies, and their quantitative connection to chemical equilibrium under dif…

A transformational Brown Investigator Award will help chemistry professor Jillian Dempsey study how to harness light to make new molecules. She is the first awardee at UNC-Chapel Hill. The post Catalyzing new reactions — and new projects appeared first on Department of Chemistry .

Nature Chemistry, Published online: 18 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41557-026-02151-4 Aggregation usually quenches the excited states of organic dyes, limiting photocatalysis. Now it has been shown that supramolecular aggregation of amphiphilic chromophores can rigidify the molecules, stabilize localized reactive excited states and enable light-driven H2 and H2O2 production in water, establishing aggre…