Grain structure of diamond nanoparticles found to affect silicon vacancy center performance

They say that one can miss the forest for the trees. But it’s often worth taking a closer look at the trees to make sense of the dense, brambly whole. That’s what a Stanford University group did to tackle a thorny quantum-information problem in diamond. A star material for hosting quantum information, diamond nevertheless presents … Read more

Chemists develop method for site-selective difluoromethylation of pyridines

In a significant advancement for drug research and chemical synthesis, a team of chemists at the University of Münster has devised a new method to precisely integrate the biologically significant difluoromethyl group into pyridines at specific sites. The difluoromethyl group, composed of carbon, two fluorine atoms, and a hydrogen atom, is crucial for determining the … Read more

Researchers discover new carbides with implications for deep earth processes and astrobiology

Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have gained new insights in the field of high-pressure carbon chemistry: They synthesized two new carbides—compounds of carbon and another chemical element—with unique structures. The results may provide an unexpected explanation of the wide spread of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the universe. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. Carbides … Read more

Supercomputer simulations shed light on elusive BC8 carbon phase

Diamond is the strongest material known. However, another form of carbon has been predicted to be even tougher than diamond. The challenge is how to create it on Earth. The eight-atom body-centered cubic (BC8) crystal is a distinct carbon phase: not diamond, but very similar. BC8 is predicted to be a stronger material, exhibiting a … Read more

Scientists develop light-activated molecular switches

Molecules that are induced by light to rotate bulky groups around central bonds could be developed into photo-activated bioactive systems, molecular switches, and more. Researchers at Hokkaido University, led by Assistant Professor Akira Katsuyama and Professor Satoshi Ichikawa at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, have extended the toolkit of synthetic chemistry by making a new … Read more