The research team led by Liang'an Chen from Nanjing Normal University and Liangliang Song from Nanjing Forestry University has made a new breakthrough in the field of conjugated diene chemistry. Based on the neutral reaction mechanism of oxidative addition-reductive elimination and utilizing a ligand angle control strategy, they achieved palladium-catalyzed regio-, chemo-, and stereoselective coupling of propargyl alcohol esters with a variety of nucleophiles (including fluorides, phenols, alcohols, carboxylic acids, and amides), constructing a series of high-value-added multi-substituted conjugated dienes. The practicality of this method has been demonstrated through the application and transformation of these functionalized 1,3-dienes in cycloaddition and coupling reactions, as well as the subsequent modification of natural products and bioactive molecules. The article was published as an open access research article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

Raising groundwater levels and adding biochar to agricultural peat soils could dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining healthy crop production, according to a new study from Bangor University.

What if we told you that the secret to healthier soil, cleaner ecosystems, and smarter farming isn’t buried in a high-tech lab—but hidden in the data behind crop residues, wood chips, and food waste?

Meet the future of sustainable agriculture: a powerful new machine learning tool that can predict exactly how much biochar—a carbon-rich, soil-boosting material—can be made from any type of biomass, and how much nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium it will contain. No crystal ball needed. Just smart science, powered by data.

A new study published in the Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts presents a novel rattan-derived biochar microreactor designed for continuous-flow water remediation. By adjusting the cellulose-to-lignin ratio in rattan, researchers engineered a hierarchically porous carbon structure with high surface area and abundant catalytic defects. The microreactor, driven by gravity alone, achieved ultrahigh flux degradation of tetracycline, methylene blue, and rhodamine B. The system operates via a non-radical pathway, offering a metal-free, reusable, and eco-friendly approach to advanced oxidation processes.

The inherent interdependence among the device footprint, resolution, and bandwidth of spectrometers poses a challenge for further miniaturization of on-chip spectrometers. Scientists in China report an ultra-miniaturized chaos-assisted spectrometer that breaks the trade-off limitation of current spectrometers. Optical chaos is introduced into the spectrum via cavity deformation. By utilizing a single chaotic cavity, chaotic behavior can be employed to effectively eliminate periodicity in resonant cavities and de-correlate the response matrix. A broad operational bandwidth of 100 nm can be attained with a high spectral resolution of 10 pm. Additionally, the footprint of the spectrometer is compacted to a mere 20×22 μm², in the meantime addressing the three-way trade-off of resolution-bandwidth-footprint metric in prior-art spectrometers.

Scanning near-field optical microscopy encounters difficulties in characterizing sub-10-nm confined light fields due to significant disturbances of the optical field caused by the probe. Here, by employing a high spatial-resolved photoemission electron microscopy, we succeeded in imaging the ultra-confined near fields of a nanoslit mode in a coupled nanowire pair with weak disturbance. Meanwhile, a PEEM image can identify fabrication defects that are influential to the confined field but are imperceptible to many other means.

Scientists worldwide are calling for accelerated development and standardization of energy metabolism measurement technologies to tackle pressing global challenges, from ecology under climate change to public health crises.

This study presents a sustainable strategy for upcycling ocean-derived CO₂ and opens new avenues for electrochemically driven biochemical synthesis.

With the rapid development of two-dimensional MXene materials, numerous preparation strategies have been proposed to enhance synthesis efficiency, mitigate environmental impact, and enable scalability for large-scale production. The compound etching approach, which relies on cationic oxidation of the A element of MAX phase precursors while anions typically adsorb onto MXene surfaces as functional groups, remains the main prevalent strategy. By contrast, synthesis methodologies utilizing elemental etching agents have been rarely reported. Here, we report a new elemental tellurium (Te)-based etching strategy for the preparation of MXene materials with tunable surface chemistry. By selectively removing the A-site element in MAX phases using Te, our approach avoids the use of toxic fluoride reagents and achieves tellurium-terminated surface groups that significantly enhance sodium storage performance. Experimental results show that Te-etched MXene delivers substantially higher capacities (exceeding 50% improvement over conventionally etched MXene) with superior rate capability, retaining high capacity at large current densities and demonstrating over 90% capacity retention after 1000 cycles. This innovative synthetic strategy provides new insight into controllable MXene preparation and performance optimization, while the as-obtained materials hold promises for high-performance sodium-ion batteries and other energy storage systems.