Research articles

With the global climate crisis, approaches to capture emissions are critical, with the heavy industry sector being particularly challenging to decarbonize. The authors describe a new enzyme cascade for converting industrial emissions into formate salts as a hydrogen carrier or building block for chemicals.

The design of CO₂ electrolyzers is complicated by coupled transport and reaction phenomena. Here the authors develop a continuum model incorporating physical phenomena across multiple scales to predict the activity and selectivity of CO₂ electrolysis, along with the loss of CO₂ due to crossover in membrane electrode assemblies.

Achieving a net-zero future requires that hard-to-abate sectors be addressed. Co-production offers an opportunity to mitigate chemical and steel sector emissions by extracting H₂ and CO from steelmaking off-gas and using them for chemical syntheses. The authors examine carbon mitigation and costs of co-producing chemicals and steel in China.

Real-life plastic waste exists as complex mixtures, posing a challenge for efficient upcycling. Now a sunlight-powered thermocatalytic process using a Ni-based catalyst converts a plastic mixture into CH₄, H₂O and HCl. Notably, chlorine poisoning is minimized through temperature modulation driven by the diurnal sunlight cycle.

Robust decarbonization strategies for the petrochemical industry are hampered by many sources of uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions estimates. Here the authors quantify and prioritize uncertainty sources, finding that the most significant factor is the lack of detailed data about specific production processes used in chemical facilities.

It is essential to develop new dressing designs for wounds that can maintain ideal thermal comfort even under high temperatures in outdoor conditions. Now, a daytime radiative cooling dressing based on a polyamide 6/silk fibroin bilayer is demonstrated to accelerate wound healing by reducing the thermal load for skin wounds under sunlight illumination.

The recovery of gold and platinum group metals from sources like electronic waste, catalytic converter waste and mining streams remains challenging. Now, an electrochemically mediated liquid–liquid extraction process leverages the selectivity of redox-active extractants for the selective recovery of precious and critical metals including gold and platinum group metals from diverse feedstocks.

Positively charged anodes should short circuit when they are brought into contact with a cathode. The authors demonstrate that a liquid-metal anode can naturally flow toward the cathode, completely surround it and ultimately transfer to the cathode without short circuiting in an electrochemical cell.

Quantifying the strength of noncovalent interactions in supramolecular host–guest systems is key to guiding molecular design for a desired application. Now, a quantitative relationship between noncovalent interactions and electrochemistry is established that provides a new dimension for investigations into noncovalent interactions and enables the control of electrochemical properties in battery engineering.

Optimizing CO₂-to-CO electrolyzers is important for developing tandem electrolysis processes. Now an efficient precious metal-free CO₂-to-CO electrolyzer cathode design allows operation under a low stoichiometric CO₂ excess ratio that yields a molar CO concentration of 70% in the exit stream along with a diagnostic approach to its catalytic and mass transport characteristics.

A self-driving catalysis laboratory, Fast-Cat, is presented for efficient high-throughput screening of high-pressure, high-temperature, gas–liquid reaction conditions using rhodium-catalyzed hydroformylation as a case study. Fast-Cat is used to Pareto map the reaction space and investigate the varying performance of several phosphorus-based hydroformylation ligands.

Benzyl acetate is a valuable aromatic ester compound used in flavorings and fragrances. Now, a microbial approach is developed to produce benzyl acetate from d-glucose using metabolically engineered Escherichia coli strains and exploiting delayed co-culture strategies.

Selective recovery of gold from electronic waste using mild reagents is a challenge. Now a photocatalytic technology is reported to enable highly selective gold dissolution through solvent pH adjustment. This process is scaled up to allow for the efficient handling of a single batch of 10 kg of electronic waste.

The automated synthesis of highly reactive compounds is challenging. Now a digital automated platform is developed for safer, inert-atmosphere synthesis of air-, moisture-, pressure- and temperature-sensitive compounds from across the periodic table.

Steering the selectivity-determining steps is as important as the C–C coupling steps in CO₂ electroreduction. Here the authors highlight that single-site noble metal dopants on the Cu surface can influence C–O bond dissociation and direct the post-C–C coupling pathways to ethylene versus ethanol.

Building liquid devices from solid enclosing walls can be costly and lack reconfigurability. Now the rapid construction and reconfiguration of diverse liquid devices is demonstrated through assembly and disassembly of droplet arrays in a pillared substrate.

It is challenging to separate middle-sized molecules from complex mixtures using traditional molecular sieves. Here a metal–organic framework has been developed with dynamic molecular pockets that can adjust and accommodate alkynes preferentially, realizing efficient production of high-purity ethylene from its mixtures with alkynes regardless of their molecular sizes.

Protein engineering is a powerful tool to create new proteins with useful functions and behaviors, but it is slow, laborious and requires specialized knowledge, limiting its broad application. Here, the authors present a system that combines AI and experimental automation to autonomously engineer proteins without human intervention.

Developing biointerfaces that combine the advantages of both monolithic and focal elements remains challenging. Now, a hydrogel that releases surface-modified granules and shows biointerface transition capability has been developed. This granule-releasing hydrogel manages colitis, accelerates wound healing, and facilitates cardiac tissue regeneration and mapping of cardiac activity with bioelectronic devices.

Carbon–carbon bonds are ubiquitous in lignin, limiting monomer yields from current depolymerization strategies mainly targeting C–O bonds. Now, a bifunctional hydrocracking approach uses a Pt/zeolite catalyst to break C–C bonds in lignin waste, achieving monocyclic hydrocarbon yields up to 54 C%.