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Polymeric semiconductors suffer from high exciton binding energy. Here, the authors report a crystal structure engineering strategy for producing poly(triazine imide) with the capability of spontaneous exciton dissociation into free charges, enabling efficient photocatalytic overall water splitting.

Researchers show, using surface-specific vibrational spectroscopy, that in two-dimensionally nanoconfined simple aqueous electrolytes the water structure is dominated by interfacial effects, and not confinement, until angstrom-scale gaps.

Two-dimensional framework materials offer atomic-level control over electronic properties and enable novel quantum phenomena and tunable functionality. This Review highlights how structural design, doping and measurement techniques influence conductivity, and it underscores key strategies for optimizing transport properties, with broad implications for electronics, energy and quantum technologies.

Although it is well known that silica can dissolve in water, the precise mechanism is unclear. Here, the authors employ sum frequency generation spectroscopy to probe the interfacial water structure reporting directly on the underlying dissolution mechanism, which appears to be auto-catalytic.

At water's surface, its network of hydrogen-bonds is abruptly interrupted, conferring distinct properties on interfacial water from bulk water. Understanding aqueous interfaces is essential for many environmental, technological and biophysical systems, and now the pathways and rates of energy transfer at the water/air interface are elucidated using a surface-specific ultrafast spectroscopic technique.

Achieving cathodes with large areal capacities is crucial for advancing aqueous aluminum-based batteries. Here, authors report a hydrate-melt electrolyte based on AlCl₃ and organic halide salts that enables reversible Br⁻ /Br⁰ /Br⁺ chemistry with a high areal capacity of 5 mAh cm⁻².

Terahertz radiation is used to directly probe magnetotransport in metallic multilayers on the timescale of electron momentum scattering—the fundamental conditions of Nevill Mott’s model of spin-dependent conduction in metals.

Hot carrier transport in organic systems has remained elusive due to rapid energy relaxation and limited transport properties. Here highly mobile hot carriers and their relaxation dynamics are reported in a crystalline two-dimensional conjugated coordination polymer, revealing two distinct transport regimes.

Adding short, complementary oligonucleotides to single-stranded DNA condensates creates a concentrated, linearly propagating, sharp diffusion front that contradicts the fuzzy concentration gradients and nonlinear kinetics typical of Fickian diffusion.

Protein solutions can undergo liquid–liquid phase separation, by condensing into a dense phase that often resembles liquid droplets, which coexist with a dilute phase. Now it is shown that hydrophobic interactions, specifically at interfaces, can trigger a liquid–solid phase separation of a protein solution.

The surface chemistry of aqueous solutions plays a ubiquitous role in many chemical and biological processes. Here, the authors probe the surfaces of sodium halide solutions with surface-specific femtosecond vibrational spectroscopy, and observe surface concentrations of halide ions several times greater than in the bulk.

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy is compromised by the trade-off between resolution and photobleaching. Here, the authors present ReSTED, a reactivatable STED microscopy using fluorescence-recoverable nanographene that enables hour-long, super-resolution 3D imaging without bleaching.

Probing electron–phonon matrix elements in bulk materials is difficult. Now, an all-optical experimental approach is demonstrated that extracts phonon-mode- and electron-energy-resolved electron–phonon matrix elements in the bulk.

The design of covalent organic frameworks featuring high porosity and excellent charge transfer properties is crucial for widespread applications. Here, the authors report covalent organic frameworks with tunable dimensionality allowing to fine-tune their electronic band structure, charge mobility, and porosity.

Dynamic disorder reduces the carrier mobility in organic semiconductors (OSs) to an extent that depends on their specific electronic band structure. Here the authors study the temperature-dependent hole mobility of two structurally similar OSs and find that thermal access to transiently delocalized states enhances hole mobility in C8-DNTT-C8 compared to DNTT.

Nominally identical materials are found to spontaneously order into triboelectric series over repeated processes, which is found to be driven by the act of contact itself using experiments as well as numerical simulations.

Polyethers are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and display counterintuitive solubilities in water. Here the authors show, by ultrafast spectroscopies and computations, that solubility does not depend on steric factors but on the interaction of water molecules with the polymer’s charge distribution

Semiconducting metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) can be of interest for optoelectronics, but charge transport property is rarely elucidated. Here, a π–d conjugated 2D MOF shows band-like charge transport, with room-temperature mobility of 220 cm² V^–1 s^–1.

The strength of water’s hydrogen bonds is not just statistically distributed. Using ultrafast spectroscopy of isotopically dilute water the authors show that each water molecules preferentially donates one short and one long hydrogen bond.

The organization of electrolytes at the air/water interface affects the structure of interfacial water and therefore numerous natural processes. It has now been demonstrated that the surface of an electrolyte solution is stratified and consists of an ion-depleted outer surface and an ion-enriched subsurface layer, jointly determining the water interfacial structure.

NMR and Raman spectroscopies pinpoint the role of the protein droplet surface and RNA in the liquid droplet maturation mechanism of the FUS protein. A crust-like β-sheet structure is formed on the surface of FUS droplets during aging.

Controlling site-selectivity and reactivity in chemical reactions continues to be a key challenge in modern synthetic chemistry. Here, the authors demonstrate the assembly of amino-substituted porphyrins on a water surface into J-aggregate structures in the presence of charged surfactants.

MXenes with borate polyanion terminations are synthesized using a flux-assisted eutectic molten etching approach. These triatomic-layer terminations empower MXenes with considerably improved charge transport and charge storage capabilities.

The cytoplasm’s crowdedness leads one to expect that cell water is different from bulk water. By measuring the rotational motion of water molecules in living cells, Tros et al. find that apart from a small fraction of water solvating biomolecules, cell water has the same dynamics as bulk water.

The structural heterogeneity in liquid water is commonly believed to disappear beyond 50 fs due to the strong intermolecular interaction. Here, the authors show frequency-dependent vibrational relaxation, which indicates the persistence of structural heterogeneity on a picosecond timescale.

The charge transport mechanism in MXenes—an emerging class of layered materials—is not yet fully understood. A combination of terahertz spectroscopy and transport measurements shows that the formation of large polarons play a crucial role.

The insertion of metal atoms and heteroaromatic units provides a way to tune the optical, electronic and magnetic properties of graphene nanoribbons. Now the synthesis of a porphyrin-fused graphene nanoribbon with a narrow bandgap and high charge mobility has been achieved, and this material used to fabricate field-effect and single-electron transistors.

Current industrial production of hydrogen peroxide suffers from hefty energy penalties and toxic byproducts. Here, the authors report efficient photocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide by protonation-induced dispersible porous polymers with good charge-carrier transport properties.

Semiconductors that display spontaneous magnetization are attractive for spintronic applications. Here the authors report a p-type semiconducting layered metal–organic framework that displays a room temperature carrier mobility of 15 ± 2 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ as well as long-range magnetic correlations.

Linear π-conjugated polymers have attracted great attention as semiconductors for (opto)electronic devices, but charge transfer is only effective along polymer chains. Here poly(benzimidazobenzophenanthroline)-ladder-type two-dimensional conjugated polymers are presented with high charge carrier mobilities.

Ultrafast spectroscopy experiments demonstrate that graphene electrons can transfer energy directly to liquid water with no mediation from the crystal lattice as their collective plasmon oscillation excites water’s molecular charge fluctuations.

In eukaryotes, dynamins and dynamin-like proteins (DLPs) are involved in various membrane remodeling processes. Here, the authors present the structure and functional characterization of a DLP of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803.

A linear energy–momentum relation of graphene results in a high direct-current electron mobility, but this is not necessarily true at terahertz frequencies. Here, the authors show that its ultrafast conductivity is dependent on a highly nonlinear interplay between heating and cooling of the electron gas.

Reactions at the interface between mineral surfaces and flowing liquids are ubiquitous in nature. Here the authors explore, using surface-specific sum frequency generation spectroscopy and numeric calculations, how the liquid flow affects the charging and dissolution rates leading to flow-dependent charge gradients along the surface.

Vibrational energy transfer in water involves intermolecular coupling of O-H stretching modes, but much less is known about the role of the bending modes. Here the authors, combining static and femtosecond infrared, Raman, and hyper-Raman spectroscopy and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, provide insight into the energy dynamics of the bend vibrations.

Berghoff et al. discover that polycrystalline MAPbI₃ undergoes transient Wannier Stark localization at moderate field strengths, exhibiting substantial optical modulation with a fast response time. Since the polycrystallinity does not hinder the switching behaviour, this low-cost material is promising for light modulation and photonic applications.

The ionic conductivity of an aqueous electrolyte has a great impact on the performance of devices such as batteries. Here, the authors advance our understanding by showing that a high macroscopic conductivity originates from the large-amplitude sub-picosecond motions of ions on a molecular scale.

External stimuli can induce significant changes in the magnetisation of a material; however, these changes can occur very rapidly, making measurements difficult. Herein the authors demonstrate a method of ultrafast magnetometry, enabling the detection of the rapid magnetization changes.

Liquid water molecules are in constant vibrational motion, but probing how their local behaviour influences collective dynamics remains a challenge. Here, the authors present terahertz-infrared spectroscopy to elucidate coupling of the O-H stretch vibration to collective, delocalized intermolecular modes.

Thylakoid membranes are critical components of chloroplasts and cyanobacteria. Here, Hennig et al. demonstrate that IM30, a conserved chloroplast and cyanobacterial protein, binds to thylakoid membranes and can trigger membrane destabilization and fusion in a Mg2⁺dependent manner.

Liquid-phase-processable graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) over 200 nm long and with well-defined structures have now been synthesized by a bottom-up method, and are found to have a large optical bandgap of 1.88 eV. Scanning probe microscopy revealed highly ordered self-assembled monolayers of the GNRs, and the high intrinsic charge-carrier mobility of individual ribbons was characterized by terahertz spectroscopy.

Methylammonium lead iodide perovskite, a promising material for efficient photovoltaics, shows a unique temperature dependence of its optical properties. Kim et al. quantify the coupling between the optical gap and a lattice phonon at 1 THz, which favorably contributes to the thermal variation of the gap.

Inspired by the post-translational modifications of polypeptides widespread in biological systems, the one-pot synthesis of biohybrid materials was engineered within Escherichia coli using a recombinant expression and post-translational lipidation. The fatty-acid-modified elastin-like polypeptides (FAMEs) prepared, which comprise peptide-amphiphile segments prone to self-assembly fused to a thermally responsive elastin-like polypeptide, exhibit temperature-triggered hierarchical assembly.

Observation of an efficient out-of-plane energy transfer channel in van der Waals heterostructures, where charge carriers in graphene couple to hyperbolic phonon–polaritons on a picosecond timescale.

Efficient terahertz harmonic generation—challenging but important for ultrahigh-speed optoelectronic technologies—is demonstrated in graphene through a nonlinear process that could potentially be generalized to other materials.

What do a rock in a river, a red blood cell in our body and the electrodes inside a car battery have in common? Charged surfaces in contact with water. Although a unified approach to study such a variety of systems is not available yet, the current understanding — even with its limitations — paves the road to the development of new concepts and techniques.

We investigate the ultrafast optoelectronic response of semiconducting perovskite in an optically transparent terahertz cavity. Despite apparent polariton formation and strong electron-phonon coupling, the cavity-coupled material properties remain unchanged.