Analytical chemistry articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Philological analysis of labels and instructions, together with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis of residues on vessels recovered from a 26th Dynasty embalming workshop at Saqqara, Egypt provide insights into ancient Egyptian embalming practices.

    • Maxime Rageot
    • , Ramadan B. Hussein
    •  & Philipp W. Stockhammer

  • Article |

     The analytical workflow outlined in this study allows multiple crude reaction mixtures to be analysed simultaneously, with substantial reductions in method development and analysis time, and maximizes the chances of finding catalytic systems with broad substrate scope.

    • Corin C. Wagen
    • , Spencer E. McMinn
    •  & Eric N. Jacobsen

  • Article |

    Optical imaging of single-molecule electrochemical reactions in aqueous solution enables super-resolution electrochemiluminescence microscopy, which can be used to monitor the adhesion dynamics of live cells with high spatiotemporal resolution.

    • Jinrun Dong
    • , Yuxian Lu
    •  & Jiandong Feng

  • Letter |

    Characterization of a capillary flow phenomenon termed self-coalescence leads to the development of scalable, compact microfluidic devices that could see application in diagnostics, high-throughput screening and biological assays.

    • Onur Gökçe
    • , Samuel Castonguay
    •  & Emmanuel Delamarche

  • Letter |

    Combining cavity-enhanced direct frequency comb spectroscopy with buffer gas cooling enables rapid collection of well-resolved infrared spectra for molecules such as nitromethane, naphthalene and adamantane, confirming the value of the combined approach for studying much larger and more complex molecules than have been probed so far.

    • Ben Spaun
    • , P. Bryan Changala
    •  & Jun Ye

  • Outlook |

    There are several new tests for tuberculosis in the pipeline, but they must be shown to be effective in areas with limited resources and a heavy burden of HIV.

    • Catherine de Lange

  • Outlook |

    Once tuberculosis takes hold in a population it can be hard to control, but scientists are finding new ways to understand and stop its spread.

    • Ewen Callaway

  • Letter |

    Microwave spectroscopy is used to map the sign of an electric dipole Rabi frequency — which depends directly on the chirality of the molecule — onto the phase of emitted microwave radiation, thereby determining the chirality of cold gas-phase molecules.

    • David Patterson
    • , Melanie Schnell
    •  & John M. Doyle

  • Article |

    Absorption of target molecules into a porous matrix permits single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis of the ‘guest’ molecules, avoiding the need to obtain them in single-crystal form and making analysis possible using as little as 80 nanograms of sample.

    • Yasuhide Inokuma
    • , Shota Yoshioka
    •  & Makoto Fujita

  • Letter |

    Spectroscopic measurements now reveal that at low temperatures, the water in hydrophobic hydration shells has greater tetrahedral order and fewer weak hydrogen bonds than the surrounding bulk water; this structure disappears at higher temperatures and around alcohol chains longer than 1 nanometre.

    • Joel G. Davis
    • , Kamil P. Gierszal
    •  & Dor Ben-Amotz

  • News & Views |

    Radiocarbon is rare, forming no more than one part per trillion of the total carbon content of the atmosphere. An optical method allows radiocarbon to be detected at roughly 25-fold lower levels than this, opening up fresh avenues of research.

    • Richard N. Zare

  • News & Views |

    Using a microfluidic device, tiny polymeric capsules have been made in which different compounds can be isolated in separate, membrane-bound compartments — a prerequisite for the development of artificial cell aggregates.

    • Takamasa Harada
    •  & Dennis E. Discher

  • News & Views |

    Nuclear magnetic resonance is a versatile analytical technique, but acquiring well-resolved NMR spectra of chemical surfaces has been hard. The coming of age of a spectral enhancement method should change all that.

    • Robert G. Griffin

  • News & Views |

    Measurements of X-ray diffraction on small patches of a copper oxide superconductor reveal that oxygen crystal defects form fractal structures that seem to promote high-temperature superconductivity.

    • Jan Zaanen

  • News & Views |

    Microfluidic devices have many applications in chemistry and biology, but practical hitches associated with their use are often overlooked. One such device that optimizes catalysts tackles these issues head-on.

    • Robert C. R. Wootton
    •  & Andrew J. deMello

  • Letter |

    An imaging technique that could identify all the individual atoms, including defects, in a material would be a useful tool. Here an electron-microscopy approach to the problem, based on annular dark-field imaging, is described. A monolayer of boron nitride was studied, and three types of atomic substitution were identified. Careful analysis of the data enabled the construction of a detailed map of the atomic structure.

    • Ondrej L. Krivanek
    • , Matthew F. Chisholm
    •  & Stephen J. Pennycook

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