A team led by University of Maryland chemists discovered a new way to create carbenes, a class of highly reactive yet notoriously short-lived and unstable molecules. Involved in many high-energy chemical reactions such as the creation of carbohydrates, carbenes are crucial precursors to the building blocks of life on Earth—and possibly in space. The scientists successfully formed a carbene called hydroxymethylene (HCOH) by breaking down methanol (a common alcohol found in many industrial chemicals like formaldehyde) with pulses of ultraviolet radiation. The results were published in a paper on May 14, 2024, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. "It's surprising to see this carbene come from such a commonplace molecule like methanol—we have squirt bottles of it in labs everywhere," said Leah Dodson, an assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UMD and senior author of the paper.

How iron carbenes store energy from sunlight—and why they aren't better at it

Photosensitizers are molecules that absorb sunlight and pass that energy along to generate electricity or drive chemical reactions. They're generally based on rare, expensive metals; so the discovery that iron carbenes, with plain old iron at their cores, can do this, too, triggered a wave of research over the past few years. But while ever more efficient iron carbenes are being discovered, scientists need to understand exactly how these molecules work at an atomic level in order to engineer them for top performance.

Now researchers have used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to watch what happens when light hits an iron carbene. They discovered that it can respond in two competing ways, only one of which allows electrons to flow into the devices or reactions where they're needed. In this case, the molecule took the energy-producing path about 60% of the time. The team published their results January 31 in Nature Communications.

In a solar cell, an iron carbene attaches to the semiconductor film on the surface of the cell with its iron atom sticking up. Sunlight hits the iron atom and liberates electrons, which flow into the carbene attachments. If they remain on those attachments long enough—10 trillionths of a second or more—they can then move into the solar cell and boost its efficiency. In chemistry, the energy boost that photosensitizers provide helps drive chemical reactions, but requires even longer residence times for the electrons on the carbene attachments.

Science, Volume 389, Issue 6756, Page 183-189, July 2025. Summary In the July 2025 issue of Science, Volume 389, pages 183-189 likely feature original scientific research, reviews, or perspectives. Without specific title or abstract information, it’s impossible to detail the article’s content precisely. However, these pages typically present cutting-edge findings across diverse scientific…

Science, Volume 389, Issue 6756, Page 126-127, July 2025. Summary Without knowing the specific content of the Science article (Volume 389, Issue 6756, pages 126-127, July 2025), I can only provide a general summary based on typical Science journal articles. The article likely presents new research findings within a scientific discipline. Given its publication in Science, a prestigious…