These Molecular Filters Thousands of Times Thinner Than a Human Hair Could Change How the World Cleans Water

Industrial separations sit quietly at the heart of modern manufacturing, yet they consume enormous amounts of energy and generate significant environmental costs. A new membrane technology developed by an international research team promises a more precise and sustainable alternative.

Scientists from the CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI), the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences have teamed up to build a new kind of filtration membrane designed for unusually sharp molecular sorting.

Reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the approach could cut the energy cost of industrial purification and make large-scale water reuse more achievable.

A huge share of manufacturing depends on “separations.” That single word covers everything from removing unwanted byproducts during drug making to stripping color from textile wastewater to refining ingredients in food processing. Today, many of these steps still lean on distillation and evaporation, which work well but burn vast amounts of energy and add significantly to industrial carbon emissions.

Membrane systems are often viewed as a cleaner alternative because they can separate chemicals without repeatedly heating and cooling large volumes, but common polymer membranes have a persistent weakness: their pores vary in size and can change as the material ages. When the pore landscape shifts, selectivity drops, and that is a deal breaker for precision work.

A New Class of Crystalline Membranes

“To address these limitations, we engineered a new class of ultra-selective, crystalline membranes called “POMbranes”, which contain pores that are about one nanometer wide, thousands of times thinner than a human hair,” said Dr. Shilpi Kushwaha, Senior Scientist at CSMCRI.

That one-nanometer target is not just a small number. At this scale, tiny differences in molecular size and shape start to matter, which is why biology uses channels with near-perfect dimensions to control what passes through. The team drew inspiration from aquaporins, natural protein channels that let water through while blocking many other molecules, and aimed for the same kind of size-based decision-making in a synthetic material.

To do it, they turned to polyoxometalate (POM) clusters. These clusters already include a built in opening with a fixed diameter of exactly 1 nanometer, which means the filtering pathway is defined by the molecule itself rather than by a soft polymer that can slowly deform. According to Ms Priyanka Dobariya, a CSMCRI research scholar and co-first author of the article, “These POMs are tiny, crown-shaped metal clusters that have a permanent, perfect hole in their center that does not change or lose shape, which is the biggest hurdle with traditional plastic filters.”

Self-Assembly and Molecular Control

A membrane is only useful if it forms a continuous sheet without gaps, so the researchers focused on how to arrange enormous numbers of these ring-like clusters into a uniform layer. They attached flexible chemical chains to the clusters, then let the material assemble on the surface of water. Under those conditions, the clusters spread and align into an ultrathin film across large areas, a behavior that makes it easier to imagine scalable manufacturing rather than one-off laboratory samples.

By changing the chain length, the team could tune how tightly the clusters packed together. Tighter packing limits alternative routes around the pores, pushing molecules toward the designed pathway.

“This forced molecules to cross the membrane through the only open path, the one-nanometer holes built into each cluster, allowing the membrane to act like a high-tech sieve,” added Dr. Raghavan Ranganathan, Associate Professor at IITGN’s Department of Materials Engineering.

He and Mr Vinay Thakur, a PhD scholar at IITGN and the co-first author of the article, used molecular-level simulations to show how the structure guides transport and why the pores dominate what gets through.

Exceptional Selectivity and Industrial Performance

In tests, the membrane could tell apart molecules that differ in mass by only about 100 to 200 Daltons, a level of separation that conventional polymer membranes struggle to reach. For context, a Dalton is a unit used to describe molecular mass, so this result points to sorting that can discriminate between closely related compounds rather than just separating large from small.

According to Dr. Ketan Patel, Principal Scientist at CSMCRI, this level of control opens new possibilities for sustainable manufacturing. “Our membranes show almost ten times better separation performance compared to existing technologies, while remaining flexible, stable, and scalable,” he said. “Additionally, these membranes are flexible, stable across different acidity levels (pH ranges), and can be manufactured in large sheets. This combination is essential if the membranes are to be adopted widely in industry.”

That combination matters because real industrial streams are messy. Wastewater and process solvents can swing in acidity, include complex mixtures, and run continuously for long periods. A membrane that keeps its pore structure under those conditions becomes more than a laboratory curiosity.

The work is also closely tied to India’s textile and pharmaceutical industries. Textiles and apparel contribute over 2.3% of GDP and about 13% of industrial production, with a domestic market valued at USD 160 to 225 billion and projected to reach USD 250 to 350 billion by 2030.

Yet dyeing and finishing produce large volumes of polluted wastewater, so better dye removal and water recycling remain urgent. The new membranes could selectively remove dye molecules while allowing water to be reused, lowering freshwater demand and reducing chemical discharge. That is especially relevant as India’s wastewater treatment market is expected to expand rapidly in the coming years.

The new membranes could selectively remove dye molecules while allowing water to be reused, reducing freshwater consumption and chemical discharge. This is particularly significant as India’s wastewater treatment market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.

Toward Scalable, Nature-Inspired Manufacturing

For the pharmaceutical sector, where precise separations are essential for drug purity and cost-effective manufacturing, the technology could offer significant benefits. “Processes like drug purification and solvent recovery are both energy-intensive and quality-sensitive,” noted Mr Vinay Thakur. “Highly selective membranes such as these can lower energy use while maintaining the stringent standards required in pharmaceutical production.”

The versatility of the engineered POMbranes makes them an efficient platform technology. Their tunable structure, high selectivity, and stability under harsh chemical conditions ensure their suitability for a wide range of separation challenges, from wastewater treatment to advanced chemical processing.

As industries seek solutions that balance efficiency, durability, and sustainability, molecularly engineered membranes could form the backbone of next-generation manufacturing technologies. By drawing on a core principle from biology precise control at the molecular scale and translating it into a scalable materials system, the research shows how nature-inspired design can address real industrial needs.

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A Shimmering Liquid Metal Could Unlock the Future of Green Hydrogen

A new liquid-metal process powered by light could reshape how hydrogen is produced.

Scientists have found a new way to make clean hydrogen from water using liquid metal and light, and it works with both freshwater and seawater. Instead of relying on electricity to split water, the process uses sunlight to trigger chemistry at the surface of tiny metal droplets, releasing hydrogen gas.

That seawater capability is a big deal. Many existing green hydrogen approaches perform best with highly purified water, which adds cost and complexity and can be difficult to justify in water stressed regions.

By working directly with seawater, the new method points toward hydrogen production that could be located closer to coastlines and industrial ports where demand is high and freshwater is limited.

“We now have a way of extracting sustainable hydrogen, using seawater, which is easily accessible while relying solely on light for green hydrogen production,” said lead author and PhD candidate Luis Campos.

Liquid Metals and Efficiency Gains

Senior researcher Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh from the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering describes the work as a powerful example of how liquid metals can naturally drive hydrogen production through their chemistry.

Using this method, the research team achieved a peak hydrogen production efficiency of 12.9 percent. While the system is still in its early stages, efforts are underway to further raise efficiency levels to support future commercial use.

“For the first proof-of-concept, we consider the efficiency of this technology to be highly competitive. For instance, silicon-based solar cells started with six percent in the 1950s and did not pass 10 percent till the 1990s.”

“Hydrogen offers a clean energy solution for a sustainable future and could play a pivotal role in Australia’s international advantage in a hydrogen economy,” says project co-lead Dr. Francois Allioux.

Gallium stood out because of its ability to absorb light. This property led researchers to examine how gallium behaves when dispersed in water and exposed to sunlight.

That investigation resulted in a system built around a circular chemical process. Tiny gallium particles are suspended in either freshwater or seawater and activated by sunlight or artificial illumination. During this process, gallium reacts with water to form gallium oxyhydroxide while releasing hydrogen gas.

“After we extract hydrogen, the gallium oxyhydroxide can also be reduced back into gallium and reused for future hydrogen production which we term a circular process,” says Professor Kalantar-Zadeh.

A Simple Reaction with Big Implications

Liquid gallium displays unusual physical characteristics. Although it appears solid at room temperature, warming it to around body temperature causes it to melt into reflective pools of liquid metal.

Mr Campos explained that liquid gallium typically has a chemically “non-sticky” surface, meaning other materials do not readily adhere to it under normal conditions. When the metal is exposed to light while submerged in water, however, reactions occur at its surface.

Under these illuminated conditions, gallium slowly oxidizes and corrodes. This surface reaction leads to the release of clean hydrogen gas and the formation of gallium oxyhydroxide, both of which are central to the hydrogen production process.

“Gallium has not been explored before as a way to produce hydrogen at high rates when in contact with water such a simple observation that was ignored previously,” says Professor Kalantar-Zadeh.

The University of Sydney-led research was published in Nature Communications.

Why scientists are so keen on hydrogen molecules

Many industries and scientists believe hydrogen is the ideal candidate for a sustainable energy source, contributing significantly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ‘Green’ hydrogen, as its name suggests, is made using renewable sources.

Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on Earth and can be sourced from a large range of compounds as well, such as water (water has two hydrogen molecules). When hydrogen burns, it produces no pollutants, only water, but still can generate high levels of energy or power.

Efforts to produce green hydrogen have focused on ‘water splitting’: splitting atoms in water molecules to release hydrogen using methods including electrolysis, photocatalysis, and plasma (artificial lightning).

But the process required to separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water has faced multiple obstacles, including the need to use purified water, incurring high cost or producing low yields of hydrogen.

The method Professor Kalantar-Zadeh’s team introduced with liquid gallium avoids many of those obstacles. The method can use both sea and fresh water, and because the process is circular, gallium in the reaction can be reused.

Professor Kalantar-Zadeh said: “There is a global need to commercialize a highly efficient method for producing green hydrogen. Our process is efficient and easy to scale up.”

The team is now working on increasing the efficiency of the technology, and their next goal is to establish a mid-scale reactor to extract hydrogen.

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AI model uses molecular energy to predict the most stable atom arrangements

Whether a smartphone battery lasts longer or a new drug can be developed to treat incurable diseases depends on how stably the atoms constituting the material are bonded. The core of molecular design lies in finding how to arrange these countless atoms to form the most stable molecule. Until now, this process has been as difficult as finding the lowest valley in a massive mountain range, requiring immense time and costs. Researchers at KAIST have developed a new technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to solve this process quickly and accurately.

Professor Woo Youn Kim's research team in the Department of Chemistry has developed the Riemannian denoising model (R-DM), an AI model that understands the physical laws governing molecular stability to predict structures. Their innovation is published in Nature Computational Science.

The most significant feature of this model is that it directly considers the energy of the molecule. While existing AI models simply mimic the shape of molecules, R-DM refines the structure by considering the forces acting within the molecule. The research team represented the molecular structure as a map where higher energy is depicted as hills and lower energy as valleys, designing the AI to move toward and find the valleys with the lowest energy.

R-DM completes the molecule by navigating this energy landscape, avoiding unstable structures to find the most stable state. This applies the mathematical theory of Riemannian geometry, resulting in the AI learning the fundamental law of chemistry: Matter prefers the state with the lowest energy.

Experimental results showed that R-DM achieved up to 20 times higher accuracy than existing AI models, reducing prediction errors to a level nearly indistinguishable from precise quantum mechanical calculations. This represents the world's highest level of performance among AI-based molecular structure prediction technologies.

This technology can be utilized in various fields, including new drug development, next-generation battery materials, and high-performance catalyst design. It is expected to serve as an "AI simulator" that will dramatically speed up research and development by significantly shortening the molecular design process, which previously took a long time. Furthermore, it has great potential in environmental and safety fields, as it can quickly predict chemical reaction paths in situations where experiments are difficult, such as chemical accidents or the spread of hazardous substances.

Professor Kim said, "This is the first case where artificial intelligence has understood the basic principles of chemistry and judged molecular stability on its own. It is a technology that can fundamentally change the way new materials are developed."

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Unlocking the Secrets of Ceria & SrFeO3! #worldresearchawards #Analytical chemistry #researchawards

 

This study investigates the crystal chemistry and interfacial stability of ceria and doped SrFeO₃ systems engineered with reduced critical raw materials, highlighting structure property relationships, defect chemistry, and long-term stability for sustainable energy and catalytic applications. 

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Revolutionizing Ergothioneine Production! #worldresearchawards #Analytical chemistry #researchawards

 

This work presents a scalable ergothioneine manufacturing strategy combining efficient chemical methylation with rhodanese-catalyzed carbon–sulfur bond formation, enabling high-yield, cost-effective, and sustainable production while bridging synthetic chemistry and biocatalysis for industrial applications through modular integration and process intensification at scale.

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UCLA Chemists Have Created “Impossible” 3D Bonds That Shouldn’t Exist

UCLA chemists proved that some of chemistry’s oldest rules can be broken and new molecules emerge when they are.

Organic chemistry is built on well-known principles that describe how atoms connect, how chemical bonds form, and how molecules take shape. These rules are often treated as firm boundaries that define what structures are possible. Researchers at UCLA, however, are showing that some of these limits are more flexible than long assumed.

Challenging a Century Old Rule

In 2024, a research team led by UCLA chemist Neil Garg overturned Bredt’s rule, a principle that has guided chemists for more than 100 years. The rule states that molecules cannot contain a carbon-to-carbon double bond at the “bridgehead” position (the ring junction of a bridged bicyclic molecule). Building on that work, Garg’s lab has now advanced the chemistry of even more unconventional structures, creating cage-shaped molecules with double bonds known as cubene and quadricyclene.

Double Bonds That Break the Mold

In most organic molecules, atoms connected by double bonds arrange themselves in a flat plane. Garg’s team found that this familiar geometry does not apply to cubene and quadricyclene. Their results, published in Nature Chemistry, expand the range of molecular shapes chemists can create and point toward new possibilities for drug discovery.

“Decades ago, chemists found strong support that we should be able to make alkene molecules like these, but because we’re still very used to thinking about textbook rules of structure, bonding, and reactivity in organic chemistry, molecules like cubene and quadricyclene have been avoided,” said corresponding author Garg, distinguished Kenneth N. Trueblood professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. “But it turns out almost all of these rules should be treated more like guidelines.”

Rethinking Bond Order and Molecular Shape

Organic molecules typically feature three kinds of bonds: single, double, and triple. Carbon double bonds are called alkenes and usually have a bond order of 2, which reflects how many electron pairs are shared between the bonded atoms. In standard alkenes, the carbon atoms adopt a trigonal planar arrangement, producing a flat structure around the double bond.

The molecules examined by Garg’s group, together with longtime collaborator Ken Houk of UCLA, behave differently. Because of their unusual three-dimensional architecture, these cage-shaped molecules have bond orders closer to 1.5 than to 2.

“Neil’s lab has figured out how to make these incredibly distorted molecules, and organic chemists are excited by what might be done with these unique structures,” says Houk.

Why Three Dimensional Molecules Matter

The discovery arrives as researchers increasingly focus on designing molecules with complex three-dimensional shapes for medical applications. Many modern drugs rely on rigid structures that interact more precisely with biological targets.

“Making cubene and quadricyclene was likely considered pretty niche in the 20th century,” said Garg. “But nowadays we are beginning to exhaust the possibilities of the regular, more flat structures, and there’s more of a need to make unusual, rigid 3D molecules.”

How the Molecules Are Formed

To generate these rule-breaking molecules, the team first created stable precursor compounds. These precursors included silyl groups, which are groups of atoms centered on a silicon atom, along with nearby leaving groups. When the precursors were treated with fluoride salts, cubene or quadricyclene formed inside the reaction vessel.

Because these molecules are extremely reactive, they were immediately captured by other reactants. This approach allowed the researchers to produce complex molecular products that are otherwise difficult to synthesize.

Hyperpyramidalized and Short Lived Structures

According to the researchers, the reactions proceed quickly because the alkene carbons in cubene and quadricyclene adopt severely pyramidalized shapes rather than the flat geometries usually seen in alkenes. To describe this extreme distortion, the team introduced the term “hyperpyramidalized” and used computational methods to analyze the unusually weak bonding.

Although cubene and quadricyclene are highly strained and unstable and cannot yet be isolated or directly observed, experimental evidence and computer modeling support their brief existence during the reactions.

“Having bond orders that are not one, two, or three is pretty different from how we think and teach right now,” said Garg. “Time will tell how important this is, but it’s essential for scientists to question the rules. If we don’t push the limits of our knowledge or imaginations, we can’t develop new things.”

Implications for Future Drug Design

Garg’s team believes this work could help pharmaceutical researchers develop future medicines. Compared with drugs from past decades, many new candidates are built around more intricate three-dimensional frameworks, signaling a major shift in what effective medicines can look like.

The researchers see a clear practical need to expand the library of available molecules in order to support increasingly advanced drug discovery.

Education, Creativity, and Collaboration

The study also reflects the creative approach that has made Garg’s organic chemistry courses among the most popular at UCLA. Many of the students trained in his lab have gone on to successful careers in academia and industry.

“In my lab, three things are most important. One is pushing the fundamentals of what we know. Second is doing chemistry that may be useful to others and have practical value for society,” he said. “And third is training all the really bright people who come to UCLA for a world-class education and then go into academia, where they continue to discover new things and teach others, or into industry, where they’re making medicines or doing other cool things to benefit our world.”

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Scientists Finally Solve a 30-Year-Old Cancer Mystery Hidden in Rye Pollen

Nearly 30 years after rye pollen molecules were shown to slow tumor growth in animals, scientists have finally determined their exact three-dimensional structures.

Nearly 30 years ago, researchers noticed something surprising in rye pollen: two naturally occurring molecules seemed to slow tumor growth in animal studies. The finding drew interest, but the science hit a wall because no one could pin down a crucial detail that determines how a compound behaves in the body: its exact three dimensional shape.

Chemists at Northwestern University now report that they have solved that long running structural puzzle. By assembling the molecules step by step in the lab, the team confirmed the true 3D structures of secalosides A and B, giving researchers a reliable starting point for the next phase of work.

That “blueprint” matters because biology is shape driven. Once scientists know how a molecule is arranged in space, they can begin testing how it might interact with immune cells and other biological targets, and they can design close variants to see which features are important. In this case, it could help clarify whether specific components of rye pollen, a staple cereal crop grown for its grain, might eventually inspire new ideas for cancer treatment.

The study was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“In preliminary studies, other researchers found that rye pollen could help different animal models clear tumors through some unknown, non-toxic mechanism,” said Northwestern’s Karl A. Scheidt, who led the study. “Now that we confirmed the structure of these molecules, we can find the active ingredient or what part of the molecule is doing the work. This is an exciting starting point to make better versions of these molecules that could possibly inform approaches to cancer therapy.”

Scheidt is a professor of chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of pharmacology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He also is a member of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute and of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Nature as inspiration for medicine

Nature has repeatedly provided starting points for major medical advances, even when the raw materials were not ready to be used as drugs in their original form. Many familiar medicines trace back to compounds first found in plants and microbes, which scientists later refined to make them safer, more effective, or easier for the body to use.

Morphine, a long used treatment for severe pain, comes from the opium poppy. Taxol, a key cancer therapy, was first obtained from the Pacific yew tree. Statins, widely taken to lower cholesterol and reduce heart disease risk, were developed from molecules discovered in fungi.




“Natural products aren’t necessarily effective drugs on their own, but they are great leads,” Scheidt said. “We can find inspiration in natural products and use chemistry to make better versions that are orally available, survive the metabolism and hit the right targets.”

Eventually, rye pollen potentially could join these ranks. Many consumers around the world already ingest rye pollen extract in supplement form to protect prostate health. But scientists haven’t yet optimized it for use as a pharmaceutical drug. Understanding how it works required knowing the molecules’ precise three-dimensional shape information that proved elusive.

A molecular mystery

Using traditional techniques, such as advanced nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, scientists could not fully reveal the orientation of the molecules’ key parts. As a result, two competing structural models persisted for decades.

Those two proposed structures had the same atoms, same connections and same overall shape. But a central part of the molecules are mirror images of each other. That subtle distinction can change how the molecule fits into a biological target and determine whether a molecule is biologically active or inert.

“It’s like your hands,” Scheidt said. “They are mirror images of each other, but you need a different glove for each. If you had two left-handed gloves, it wouldn’t work because your hands can’t be superimposed on top of one another.”

Building from scratch

To settle the question once and for all, the Northwestern team turned to total synthesis, or the step-by-step process of constructing a natural molecule in the laboratory. The approach was incredibly complicated and challenging. At their cores, secalosides A and B contain an extremely rare and highly strained feature: a tightly compressed, 10-membered ring that is notoriously difficult to build.

Scheidt and his team devised a clever workaround. They first built a larger, more flexible ring and then triggered a reaction that snapped it into a smaller, strained shape in a single step. After synthesizing both competing structural versions of the secalosides, the scientists compared them to samples isolated from rye pollen. Only one version matched perfectly, finally revealing the true molecular structure.

“We’ve demonstrated we can make the core of this natural product,” Scheidt said. “Now, we’re trying to find potential collaborators in immunology who could help us translate this to a possible clinical endpoint.”

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