Nanographene molecules are transformed into soluble, twelve-connected linkers that assemble with metal nodes to form three-dimensional MOFs featuring unprecedented topologies. This strategy broadens the scope of reticular chemistry and establishes a pathway for designing complex porous materials with precisely controlled geometry and connectivity.

Isoreactivity offers a new lens for investigating chemical transformations. By replacing one reactive module with another, chemists can remodel energy landscapes while preserving productive reaction pathways. This framework reveals hidden parallels among established reactions and predicts new ones by emphasizing how fragments function within mechanisms. Isoreactivity provides a conceptual foundation for discovering reactivity and mapping mechanistic divergence across chemical space.

Visible-light-driven, organocatalyzed reduction and deuteration of heteroarenes have been demonstrated using core-extended coronene-tetraester photocatalysts under ambient conditions. Our strategy offers a broad substrate scope, functional group tolerance, and operational simplicity without the need for H2 gas or precious metals. Mechanistic studies reveal the involvement of an in situ-generated 2e−/1H+ super-reductant. This green and scalable approach provides sustainable access to deuterium-enriched saturated frameworks relevant to pharmaceuticals and bioactive molecule development.

The rate of interfacial proton-coupled electron transfer (I-PCET) to a graphite-conjugated carboxylic acid electrode depends on the concentration of nominally innocent supporting NaClO4 electrolyte. This dependence implies that the reaction proceeds via a multi-step sequence in which ion exchange and pre-association play key roles in facilitating I-PCET.

The synergistic regulation of the three active sites—Cu(111), Cu(100), and defects—is achieved through crystal facet engineering. Cu(111) efficiently generates ∗CO, creating the high local ∗CO coverage needed for C–C coupling on Cu(100). Defect sites enhance H2O activation, ensuring a sufficient proton supply. The key intermediate reaction rates achieve the best balance, promoting the C2+ formation pathway.

An advanced reverse photocurrent (|Ilight| < |Idark|) is observed in a Pt nanoparticles/carbon nitride Schottky junction-based photoelectrochemical system, which is achieved by the regulation of oxygen reduction active sites before and after light exposure. This finding enables bidirectional photocurrent generation without the need for cathode-anode switchover and offers fresh insights into the photoelectrode design of photoelectrochemical sensing applications.

In the August 7 issue of Science, Liu and colleagues report a co-crystallization strategy for inorganic-polymer hybrids and achieve ordered interfaces for the efficient coupling of mechanical, electrical, and magnetic responses. The resulting VSe2-PVDF magnetoelectric nanocomposites enable flexible, low-energy wearable sensors with ultrafast responses, high sensitivity, and exceptional performance.

Here, we evaluate halide-free phase-change materials built from common surfactants for solid-state temperature regulation. Considering these and other phase-change materials, we illustrate how their structure can inform the design and optimization of new materials for heating and cooling.

Oxidative dehydrogenation of solvents strongly depends on their molecular orientation at the cathode surface. By directing solvent orientation with a tailored additive, this study achieves durable high-voltage lithium-ion batteries and establishes a new molecular-level paradigm for additive design.

Precise control over out-of-equilibrium states is key to creating smart materials. Here, we report a synthetic supramolecular polymer system that forms distinct out-of-equilibrium structures of different dimensionalities depending on light intensity. Real-time high-speed AFM imaging revealed the underlying mechanisms, including light-driven facet-selective polymorphic transformation and Ostwald ripening. This study offers a general design principle for adaptive materials whose structures and functions are finely tuned by the amount of energy input.

The bread and butter of drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry is the synthesis of complex scaffolds, including chiral heterocyclic motifs. However, general access remains a long-standing goal and challenge. Despite the high demand, the synthesis of some entities is limited by step-intensive and costly routes. To address these challenges, we herein present the development of a highly selective ruthenium-NHC catalyst that enables direct access to a broad range of chiral 6,5-heterocycles from readily available arenes.

A challenge in the de novo synthesis of life is coupling genotype with phenotype. To achieve this, we use fuel-dependent synthetic cells that host a low-fidelity replicator. This replicator increases the droplet’s lifetime while encapsulation enhances replication fidelity, also during repeated cycles of fueling and starvation.

In seawater, uranium exists as the linear uranyl ion (2.3 Å), whereas vanadium forms larger tetrahedral orthovanadate ions (5.7 Å). To exploit this size difference, we synthesized rigid porous aromatic frameworks (PAF-1-O, and PAF-1-AO) with tailored pore windows. This design combines high-density binding sites with precise size exclusion, resulting in a high uranium-adsorption capacity and excellent uranium-to-vanadium (U/V) selectivity.

Enhancing the selectivity of carbon monoxide reduction toward multi-carbon products poses a significant challenge. Now, writing in Nature Chemistry, Zhang and colleagues demonstrate that high ionic strength significantly improves C–C coupling by decreasing water ordering on the surface of copper catalysts and thus achieves more than 90% Faradaic efficiency toward multi-carbon products.

In this issue of Chem, Queen and co-workers introduce cluster dehydroxylation by using rapid heat treatment as a new defect-engineering strategy in zirconium-based frameworks. They thoroughly characterize the oxygen-vacancy nature of the defect, primarily by pair distribution function (PDF) analysis. Dehydrated DUT-67 exhibited double the catalytic activity for glyoxal hydration of the pristine material.

The suboptimal catalytic activity and spatiotemporal uncontrollability of bioorthogonal catalysts hinder their application in biological systems. In this work, the authors developed an “AND” logic-gated zinc-palladium (Zn-Pd) nanogenerator for biorthogonal catalysis, which provides a valuable approach for the rational design of efficient and intelligent bioorthogonal catalysts.

This review focuses on solar-driven catalytic plastic transformation, providing a comprehensive analysis of current reaction systems and catalysts, along with mechanistic insights from photophysical and catalytic perspectives. It offers a tutorial overview for developing high-performance catalytic platforms to enhance solar energy utilization and reaction efficiency toward sustainable plastic upcycling.

This perspective presents the recent advances in the rational design of coordination-driven artificial enzymes, focusing on how metal-organic architectures (MOAs) can be engineered to stabilize reactive intermediates, direct substrate selectivity, and respond to external stimuli. These systems with well-defined cavities, tunable host-guest interactions, and controlled catalytic activities within confined space offer unique opportunities for advancing sustainable catalysis and biomedical innovation.

Hydroarylation constructs complex molecules from alkenes, yet achieving control in substrates bearing stereocenters remains challenging. Our “transient shielding” approach exploits the inherent chirality of secondary allylic alcohols to achieve chemo-, regio-, and diastereoselective hydroarylation, delivering enantiopure β-phenethyl alcohols with multiple stereocenters and broadening the scope of selective alkene hydrofunctionalization.

Scholes and colleagues develop an experimental method for measuring the time-resolved exciton delocalization length in molecular aggregates through transient absorption spectroscopy and apply it to a J-aggregate and a molecular dimer. Exciton localization occurring on picosecond timescales was detected in J-aggregates, suggesting the significance of diffusion-mediated localization.

This review offers a comprehensive overview of the roles of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) in photocatalytic overall reactions. It highlights their structural merits, optimization strategies, and recent progress in various overall reactions, including water splitting, CO2 reduction, H2O2 synthesis, dual-functional reactions, and methane oxidation. Finally, challenges and future directions in the development of MOF- and COF-based photocatalysts for overall reactions are pointed out.

The selective B–H functionalization of carboranes has garnered significant attention in recent years, which in turn has spurred an urgent demand for perdeuterated carboranes to elucidate reaction mechanisms. Herein, we present a Pd(II)-catalyzed B–H perdeuteration method enabled by electrophilic H/D exchange and intermolecular Pd migration.

Researchers at Yale University develop photoluminescent materials based on the renewable material lignin, a pulp-and-paper waste product, and amino acid derivatives in alignment with the principles of green chemistry. The emitter material based on histidine methyl ester and lignin exhibits room-temperature phosphorescence that lasts for hundreds of milliseconds by means of optimized molecular frameworks that stabilize triplet excited states without requiring heavy metals or heavy atoms.