2021 New's Items

A crewed mission to and from Mars may include an exciting array of enabling biotechnologies that leverage inherent mass, power, and volume advantages over traditional abiotic approaches. In this perspective, we articulate the scientific and engineering goals and constraints, along with example systems, that guide the design of a surface biomanufactory. Extending past arguments for exploiting stand-alone elements of biology, we argue for an integrated biomanufacturing plant replete with modules for microbial in situ resource utilization, production, and recycling...

Metal-halide perovskites have rapidly emerged as one of the most promising materials of the 21st century, with many exciting properties and great potential for a broad range of applications, from photovoltaics to optoelectronics and photocatalysis. The ease with which metal-halide perovskites can be synthesized in the form of brightly luminescent colloidal nanocrystals, as well as their tunable and intriguing optical and electronic properties, has attracted researchers from different disciplines of science and technology. In the last few years, there has been a significant progress...

Undercoordinated metal nanoclusters have shown great promise for various catalytic applications. However, their activity is often limited by the covalently bonded ligands, which could block the active surface sites. Here, we investigate the ligand removal process for Au25 nanoclusters using both thermal and electrochemical treatments, as well as its impact on the electroreduction of CO2 to CO. The Au25 nanoclusters are synthesized with 2-phenylethanethiol as the capping agent and anchored on sulfur-doped...

Addressing the three major stresses facing our planet, clean air, clean energy, and clean water, is within our reach. At present, new materials such as metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, produced by reticular chemistry, are at the forefront of efforts to capture carbon dioxide from air and harvest water from air. We envision that the products of these two capture processes (carbon dioxide and water) can be fed into a conversion cycle in which they are used to produce fuels and chemicals via artificial photosynthesis. The use of air as a nonpolluting, cyclable,...