A newly designed magnesium-tin alloy is bringing magnesium batteries a step closer to reality. The new alloy design improves both stability and magnesium-ion transport inside solid-state batteries, helping address one of the long-standing challenges in next-generation battery technology.

Certain β-titanium alloys achieve ultrahigh compressive strength despite showing none of the precipitate particles that typically explain such strength. Using aberration-corrected electron microscopy and elemental mapping, researchers at AIMR identified nanoscale short-range chemical and topological ordering within the alloy matrix as the hidden strengthening mechanism, opening new avenues for designing high-performance titanium alloys.

What if some of the most important scientific discoveries are already hidden in data collected years ago? Researchers at Tohoku University are exploring how AI and data-driven science can reveal new insights from past experiments and scientific literature. Their review highlights how old data could help accelerate discoveries in chemistry and materials science. 

Researchers at Kyoto University and Tohoku University have developed a new porous polymer gel that selectively recognizes specific molecules (referred to as ‘guests’ in the study) through coordination chemistry and converts these invisible molecular-scale interactions into strikingly visible, macroscale deformation. The study demonstrates how subtle differences in molecular structure can directly alter the shape, color, and mechanical properties of a soft material, opening new possibilities for “smart” stimuli-responsive materials and molecularly programmable soft matter that can sense and react to its environment.

Researchers at Tohoku University have uncovered a new principle that could help accelerate the development of cheaper and more efficient fuel cells. The team discovered that dual-atom catalysts follow a previously unknown “dual-Sabatier optima” pattern, overturning long-standing assumptions in catalyst science and opening new possibilities for clean energy technologies.

A collaborative research team from Kanazawa University and Kyoto University reports in the Journal of the American Chemical Society the successful visualization of how densely assembled macrocyclic host molecules cooperate to capture guest molecules on a surface. Using two advanced atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques, the team directly observed host–guest complex formation and reversible association–dissociation dynamics at the single-molecule level. The study reveals that when one macrocyclic molecule captures a guest molecule, this event influences neighboring host molecules and promotes further guest capture. This cooperative behavior emerges only when the host molecules are densely assembled on a surface. The findings provide new insight into how surface-confined molecular interactions give rise to cooperative behavior and could contribute to the design of next-generation chemical sensors, separation systems, and storage materials.

Recent research at Tohoku University is providing a major update to our current knowledge of the biodiversity of a type of highly venomous box jellyfish of the genus Chironex, such as an entirely new species found in Singapore.