Nature Chemistry, Published online: 25 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41557-026-02259-7Access to long-lived light-induced states in earth-abundant transition-metal chromophores is desirable but hard to achieve. Now, enhanced metal–ligand covalency has been shown to increase the lifetime of the photomagnetic high-spin state in a manganese photoswitch.

Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.

Zinc paddlewheels are widely found in metal-organic frameworks, but found more sparingly in porous molecules. Here we report some of the first examples of metal-organic polyhedra containing zinc paddl...

Substituents in supramolecular chemistry are usually treated as passive handles that tune solubility or reactivity rather than as active determinants of assembly pathways. Here we show that tosyl grou...

Team behind work say this is a reminder that even simple reactions are more complicated than they first seem

Near-infrared (NIR) emission in molecular materials is typically achieved by narrowing the band gap through extended π-conjugation or heavy-atom substitution. Here, we report an unconventional route─e...

Near-infrared (NIR) emission in molecular materials is typically achieved by narrowing the band gap through extended π-conjugation or heavy-atom substitution. Here, we report an unconventional route─excited-state symmetry breaking─that enables NIR emission while preserving a wide band gap. Copper(I) thiocyanate (CuSCN), a transparent semiconductor with optical activity normally observed only in the ultraviolet region, forms a dimeric complex with 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBTz). In thin films, CuSCN-MBTz complex exhibits NIR photoluminescence at 800 nm, while retaining a large optical gap (>3 eV), resulting in a transparent NIR-emissive material with a large Stokes shift of ∼15,000 cm–1. Structural and spectroscopic analyses reveal that, unlike the rigid crystalline phase, the film state allows molecular reorganization of Cu2(SCN)2(MBTz)4 dimers, which induces symmetry breaking and lowers the energy of the emissive state without reducing the band gap, in contrast to typical Cu(I) emitters. This work provides a new photophysical mechanism for generating long-wavelength emission from wide-band gap, earth-abundant Cu(I) systems and widens the functional scope of CuSCN materials.

Ultrafast broadband transient absorption spectroscopy and multireference excited-state nonadiabatic calculations in an open-shell Fe(III) complex unveil the rich electronic and vibrational dynamics d...

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