https://phys.org/chemistry-news/ en-us The latest news stories on chemistry, biochemistry, polymers, materials science from Phys.org Graphite, the carbon core of a humble No. 2 pencil, is also an essential component in technologies such as batteries, smartphones, laptops and industrial power equipment. Today, nearly all of this critical mineral must be mined and processed and, in the United States, imported. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-graphite-newly.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:00:01 EDT news704646526 Algae are increasingly being explored as sustainable "living factories" that can convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into renewable fuels, plastics, pharmaceuticals and other valuable products. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-redistributing-sunlight-boosts-algae-biomass.html Biochemistry Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:10:02 EDT news704647981 Pharmaceutical drugs often rely on chemical compounds found in the body. Take phosphate, a common compound cells use as a chemical switch. In a process called phosphorylation, cells can add a phosphate to a molecule and turn its function on. When the function is no longer needed, cells can remove the phosphate through dephosphorylation, turning the molecule back off. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-atps-recycling-cheaper-pathways-drug.html Biochemistry Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:00:08 EDT news704642281 The Hiroshima blast on Aug. 6, 1945, was one of the most devastating events in human history. Like all nuclear detonations, it created fleeting moments of extreme heat, pressure, mixing and cooling. These conditions can briefly produce materials that could never form under normal circumstances. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hiroshima-blast-debris-reveals-previously.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:40:04 EDT news704623621 The pulp and paper industry, which manufactures everything from tissue paper to cardboard, also generates a significant yet often overlooked byproduct—a complex polymer called lignin. Around 100 million tons of lignin are produced each year. Despite being the largest natural source of aromatic carbon on the planet, most of it is burned for energy. This is due to its complex structure, which is notoriously difficult to process. Researchers are exploring ways to leverage industrial lignin by developing methods to convert it into useful bio-based chemicals. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-industry-toughest-lignin-byproducts-feedstock.html Biochemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:40:03 EDT news704553481 Over the past few decades, scientists have become increasingly interested in developing materials that do not simply withstand mechanical forces but instead respond to them in useful, detectable ways. For example, it is now possible to engineer materials that signal when they are under stress through changes in color or brightness. This growing domain, sometimes called mechanochromic or mechanoresponsive materials science, has found applications in structural sensors and advanced optical technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-mechanically-tunable-molecular-circularly-polarized.html Materials Science Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:20:05 EDT news704550570 The chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides (ONs) is central to modern molecular biology, diagnostics and nucleic acid therapeutics. While demand for high-quality ONs is increasing, the conventional synthetic method has long-standing efficiency challenges. Widely adopted P(III)-phosphoramidite-based ON synthesis requires an oxidation step after every nucleotide coupling cycle and uses moisture-sensitive building blocks, adding complexity to the workflow and slowing the process. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-stable-dna-blocks-enable-faster.html Biochemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:20:06 EDT news704550121 Plants need nitrogen fertilizers, which are usually ammonia-based. Ammonia is therefore one of the most important chemical products. However, its production is currently extremely energy-intensive. An international team from TU Wien and Soochow University in China has developed a novel catalyst that can convert nitrate from wastewater into ammonia much more efficiently than before—powered by sunlight and about 1.5 volts. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-gold-mxene-catalyst-nitrate-ammonia.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:00:08 EDT news704544061 For decades, scientists have largely relied on painstaking trial and error to coax proteins into crystalline forms. Crystallization enables scientists to determine the molecular structures of proteins, which can provide a blueprint for designing drugs, engineering enzymes and understanding disease. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-flexible-dna-proteins-atomically-crystals.html Biochemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:00:05 EDT news704473861 Researchers at Colorado State University have developed a process to transform naturally occurring, highly stable carbon dioxide into recyclable, high-performance materials that could replace today's plastics in many situations. Their catalytic process, described in the journal Nature, is another step toward a circular economy that reduces plastic waste and supports environmental sustainability. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-captured-carbon-dioxide-yield-strong.html Polymers Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:00:02 EDT news704451400 Researchers at the University of Warwick and spinout company Verdel Instruments have successfully demonstrated two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS) on a benchtop instrument, making this powerful technique practical and affordable for everyday laboratory use. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-advanced-mass-spectrometry-technique-free.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 09:20:02 EDT news704531582 Ethanol is an alcohol used in a vast number of industrial and household applications. When dehydrogenated—in this case, stripped of some of its hydrogen atoms—it yields another important compound: acetaldehyde, which is used to make resins, dyes, perfumes and synthetic flavors, among many other products. But currently available catalysts for ethanol dehydrogenation suffer from deactivation, poor performance over time and unwanted side reactions. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-successful-sustainable-catalyst-ethanol-dehydrogenation.html Materials Science Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:40:01 EDT news704530201 A research team led by Dongwoo Lee, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), and Yanhui Liu of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has developed a new electrical resistivity-based indicator for rapidly screening alloy compositions with high glass-forming ability. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-indicator-metallic-glass-discovery.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:00:06 EDT news704457804 Nitrate contamination originating from agricultural runoff, industrial wastewater and municipal effluents is a growing global environmental problem. At the same time, ammonia has emerged as a key chemical feedstock and an attractive carbon-free energy carrier for a sustainable society. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-cuco-catalyst-nitrate-pollution-green.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:00:03 EDT news704467682 Seoul National University (SNU) College of Engineering announced that a research team led by Professor Jeong Woo Han of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has developed a new nanostructured catalyst with up to 14.4 times the greenhouse gas decomposition performance of conventional commercial catalysts. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nanomace-catalyst-boosts-greenhouse-gas.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:40:04 EDT news704458089 A naturally abundant plant material best known for giving trees and crops their strength may one day help repair broken bones, according to a new study led by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Srinath Palakurthy and Professor Rivka Elbaum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-derived-lignin-bone-minerals.html Biochemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:40:01 EDT news704463362 Plastic recycling could become far more effective thanks to a new technique that restores the strength of damaged engineering plastics by repairing them at the molecular level. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-scientists-plastics-molecular-boosting-recycling.html Polymers Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:20:02 EDT news704440910 Complex simulations—the most intricate of their kind to date—carried out by an international research team led by scientists at Heidelberg University's Institute for Physical Chemistry, have revealed how water governs the way protons move through it. Using their modeling, researchers from Cambridge (U.K.), Bochum, Dijon (France) and Heidelberg were able to trace, in full quantum detail, the movements of a proton shared among six water molecules. At its core, the work addresses how a proton moves through water: not as a single particle drifting along, but by "hopping" from one molecule to the next. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-local-asymmetry-proton-molecules-simulations.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:40:04 EDT news704385621 A new study suggests that simple molecules on early Earth may have worked together to create more stable, cell-like structures, offering fresh clues about one of science's biggest questions: how life began. Led by Dr. Moran Frenkel-Pinter of Hebrew University and her postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Rotem Edri, the research shows that two types of simple molecules, fatty acids and hydroxy acids, can combine to create structures that are stronger and more stable than either molecule can form alone. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-polymers-primitive-membranes-molecular-cooperation.html Biochemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:40:01 EDT news704386021 Biomolecular condensates are ubiquitous in living cells, including bacteria, viruses, plants and mammalian systems. These membraneless bodies, or molecular communities made up of DNA, RNA and proteins, are where molecules large and small within the cell come together to coordinate various biochemical reactions. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-biomolecular-condensates-reveal-catalysts.html Biochemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:40:05 EDT news704371561 To improve carbon recycling and reduce emissions, researchers at Science Tokyo developed iron-substituted calcium titanate (Fe-doped CaTiO3) as an environmentally friendly support material for chemical looping, a process that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide for fuel and chemical production. By substituting iron into CaTiO3, the material gained oxygen vacancies and improved ion and electron transport, accelerating CO2 conversion. Built from widely available, low-cost elements, the material could help enable scalable carbon recycling. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-rare-earth-free-material-carbon.html Materials Science Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:20:05 EDT news704367540 Sand has a way of getting everywhere on a beach day—and for some, it can make or break the whole trip. There's the way it whips through the air just as sandwiches are being unwrapped, the way it turns blisteringly hot underfoot by midday, and the way it stubbornly clings to every piece of clothing. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-physics-beach-sand.html Materials Science Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:00:15 EDT news704367519 Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 offers a promising approach to storing energy from intermittent sunlight in carbon-containing fuels and chemicals, thereby enabling carbon recycling. Single-atom Cu catalysts have attracted attention because they enhance CO2 photoreduction. However, the roles of single-atom active sites and adjacent atoms in these catalysts have not been well understood. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-reveals-atom-cu-tio-photocatalysts.html Materials Science Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:40:08 EDT news704367507 Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have found that today's leading artificial intelligence tools for predicting protein structures routinely generate results that are physically and chemically impossible, exposing critical blind spots in how AI is being applied across scientific research. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, serves as a cautionary reminder that AI still requires human oversight and physics-based verification to produce reliable results in the lab. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-tools-protein-chemically-impossible.html Biochemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:20:03 EDT news704370361 The idea of having living fungi cover your body might not be the most appealing thing in the world. But what if it was part of a clothing fabric that could change color, protect you from UV rays and even repair its own tears? Those are just some of the possibilities of a new material described in a paper published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-future-fashion-involve-fungi.html Biochemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:20:04 EDT news704365358 Modern research on secondary metabolites from microbes, plants and marine organisms has revealed a remarkable diversity of chemical structures and bioactivities with broad applications in biotechnology, agriculture and medicine. Most natural products are composed of primary biogenic elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-explores-rare-atom-natural-products.html Biochemistry Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:04 EDT news703857232 Anticancer prodrugs have attracted significant attention from the medical and scientific communities in recent years because of their potential to improve treatment precision while reducing side effects. These drugs are engineered to remain inactive until they are activated at specific sites or under particular physiological conditions within the body, at which point they release their therapeutic effect. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-gold-catalyzed-chemical-reaction-advances.html Biochemistry Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:20:03 EDT news704118241 Chiral molecules can exist in left- and right-handed forms. Although these mirror-image forms may look almost identical, they can behave very differently in chemical reactions, biological systems and advanced materials. Preparing one mirror-image form in high purity is therefore an important goal in chemistry. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-recoverable-molecular-helper-synthesis-highly.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:20:01 EDT news704036822 Coffee grounds that usually end up being thrown away can have a second life as a raw material for producing biofuels and other high-value-added products. A study by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) has evaluated how to extract oil from coffee grounds efficiently while preserving the rest of the plant material so that it can also be used in other processes. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-spent-coffee-grounds-reveal-route.html Biochemistry Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:10:01 EDT news704039042 There are few pleasures greater than letting a piece of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue. Indeed, the proximity of chocolate's melting point to our own body temperature is one reason it is so widely appreciated. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-mouth-car-ongoing-scientific-quest.html Biochemistry Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:00:01 EDT news704028001