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 higher greenhouse gas decomposition performance compared to conventional commercial catalysts.

Nanoporous material-based separation technology is vital in many applications due to its ability to precisely distinguish between and separate nearly identical chemical or biochemical molecules.

Previous research by Professor Susumu Kitagawa, from Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (WPI-iCeMS), and colleagues, published in Nature, had applied this technology to the separation of two very similar types of water molecules—regular water (H₂O) and heavy water (D₂O), which have similar properties overall but slightly different masses. But the underlying mechanics of that separation weren’t well understood.

Now, a study led by Professor Shinji Saito from the Institute for Molecular Science in Japan and published in Nature Communications in July has provided the theoretical explanation for that phenomenon, using molecules of H₂O and D₂O to study nanopore behavior in a metal-organic framework.

When plastics are recycled, their strength gets weakened over time as the long molecular chains gradually break down under repeated exposure to heat and moisture. However, a research group has added a chain extender to the recycling process, allowing polymer chains to reconnect, and a plastic tensile strength to return to normal.

Researchers from Kochi University of Technology and Nagoya University have developed a self-adaptive copper–cobalt catalyst that efficiently converts nitrate contaminants into ammonia under ambient conditions. By combining advanced operando and quasi-operando spectroscopic analyses with density functional theory calculations, the team discovered that the catalyst dynamically reconstructs during electrochemical nitrate reduction to form hydroxyl-rich Cu–OH active sites. Amorphous cobalt oxide supplies reactive hydrogen via hydrogen spillover, enabling highly efficient ammonia synthesis. The catalyst achieved an ammonia production rate of 54.68 mg h⁻¹ mgcat⁻¹ with a Faradaic efficiency of 95.4% at −0.2 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode and maintained stable performance for more than 60 hours in a flow cell. The work establishes adaptive catalyst reconstruction as a new design principle for sustainable electrocatalysis.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) have developed an antibiotic-free multifunctional injectable hydrogel that accelerates wound healing by simultaneously addressing oxidative stress, bacterial infection, and tissue regeneration. Featuring the first reported cerium–rutin nanocomplex for wound healing, the hydrogel demonstrated sustained therapeutic release, enhanced antioxidant and antibacterial activity, and faster wound closure in preclinical studies. Protected by a patent, the technology holds promise for both human and veterinary wound care and is available for clinical translation and industry partnerships.

A simple, low-dose leaf spray could give farmers a practical new tool to keep growing tomatoes on land that salt has rendered increasingly unproductive.

To enable next-generation energy devices like fuel cells and water electrolyzers, researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) collaborated with scientists at New York University to study the backbone chemistry of different types of ion-exchange membranes to better understand how their chemical make-up governs their structure and ability. They found that the nanostructures within these membranes evolve when water passes through and are affected by the stiffness of the polymer backbone. Different backbone architectures promote distinct ionic nanostructures, which govern how water is distributed within the membrane. Flexible backbones achieve higher ion conductivity with less water uptake, overcoming a trade-off that has long challenged membrane design. The results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.