Pan Jianwei's team publishes new breakthrough in Science, hailed as a 'milestone in the field of ultracold molecules' and paving the way for simulating quantum three-body problems.

Ultracold atoms and ultracold molecules have long been regarded as gateways for humanity to probe the quantum realm. At absolute zero, the kinetic energy of all matter drops to zero, and all atoms and molecules cease motion entirely. When temperature approaches—but does not quite reach—absolute zero, atoms and molecules retain limited, highly simplified, and even human-controllable motion. This enables scientists to manipulate their behavior, simulate phenomena of interest, and thereby uncover underlying dynamical laws. Typically, such ultra-low temperatures are achieved via laser cooling: lasers are directed opposite to atomic motion; through momentum exchange between photons and atoms, atomic motion slows down. This principle underlies technologies such as atomic clocks and the realization of Bose–Einstein condensates. However, this method is poorly suited to molecules. Molecules possess far more complex energy-level structures; their vibrational and rotational levels generally lack closed-loop transitions—only a handful of molecular species exhibit such behavior. Direct cooling of molecules is likewise extremely challenging. The scientific community thus conceived an alternative strategy: since ultracold atoms can be prepared, why not synthesize ultracold molecules from them? This led to the proposal of the Feshbach resonance technique. In simple terms, external magnetic fields are tuned to modify interatomic interactions, thereby enabling atom-to-molecule conversion. Prior work has already employed this approach to develop magneto-association techniques for producing diatomic potassium molecules. Pan Jianwei’s team adopted the same principle—but successfully extended it to an ultracold triatomic molecular system. In 2019, Pan Jianwei and Zhao Bo’s research group first observed collisional resonances between atoms and molecules in a three-body system at ultralow temperatures—demonstrating the feasibility of synthesizing triatomic molecules via Feshbach resonance. In February of this year, the team published another paper in Nature, further substantiating triatomic molecule synthesis. These advances culminated in the present breakthrough: Starting from a quantum-degenerate mixture of NaK molecules and K atoms, the team adiabatically transferred the NaK–K scattering state into a bound triatomic molecular state by slowly sweeping the magnetic field near the NaK–K Feshbach resonance. For the first time, they coherently prepared a high-phase-space-density ultracold triatomic molecular system using magneto-association. Simultaneously, employing radio-frequency dissociation, the team dissociated the triatomic molecules into free NaK molecules and atoms, obtaining the dissociation spectrum—and thereby achieving direct detection of triatomic molecules. Results show that the phase-space density of the resulting triatomic molecular gas is approximately ten orders of magnitude higher than that achieved by other methods. This breakthrough paves the way for simulating the quantum three-body problem.

DeepTech’s curated book Molecular Beauty: From the Origin of Life to Molecular Machines has officially been published! Exploring the origin of life and the molecular code.

One late night in 1974, a solitary lamp illuminated the laboratory of the University of Strasbourg in France. Thirty-year-old Jean-Pierre Sauvage stared intently at a cloudy liquid inside a test tube; his coffee had long gone cold. He had just anchored two copper ions onto a cyclic molecule—a nearly obsessive idea that colleagues jokingly dubbed “threading necklaces onto keyrings.” Almost no one believed he could succeed. Yet nine years later, the world’s first “molecular chain” was born. When X-rays penetrated the white crystal, two perfectly interlocked rings appeared—like a pair of dancers waltzing in perfect harmony. In that instant, humanity witnessed molecules dancing for the first time. In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for their pioneering contributions to the design and synthesis of molecular machines. The Nobel Committee stated that they had invented “the world’s smallest machines,” propelling chemistry into an entirely new dimension. Professor Sauvage’s latest book, Molecular Beauty: From the Origin of Life to Molecular Machines, serves as your key to unlocking this mysterious and beautiful microscopic molecular world. Here, chemistry ceases to be a cold subject of molecular structures and equations—it becomes an epic spanning billions of years, a romantic dialogue between human intellect and natural law. From underground laboratories to the Nobel Prize stage: A chemist’s “molecular life” Sauvage’s scientific awakening sprang from childhood fascination with nature. At age 16, he conducted chlorophyll extraction experiments in his basement using conical flasks, test tubes, and blotting paper. Watching green molecules diffuse across paper via capillary action, he experienced for the first time the awe-inspiring “magic of molecules.” This episode reflected not only youthful curiosity but also planted the seed for his lifelong pursuit: making inert molecules “move.” When he crushed oak leaves, he could hardly have imagined that one day he would make molecules rotate with gear-like precision. After entering the University of Strasbourg, Sauvage’s doctoral project seemed “mad”: synthesizing three-dimensional crown ether molecules. At the time, mainstream academia held that constructing complex molecular architectures via weak chemical bonds was nearly impossible. Yet, encouraged by his advisor Jean-Marie Lehn and aided by lab colleagues, Sauvage spent nearly three years conducting countless experiments—finally synthesizing the first cryptand molecule in 1969. This molecule functions like a nanoscale cage, capable of capturing specific ions; oil companies even attempted its use for scale removal in oil wells—though high costs prevented commercialization, it nonetheless laid the foundation for supramolecular chemistry. In 1983, Sauvage’s team synthesized the first molecular catenane (a mechanically interlocked structure comprising two interlocking rings)—akin to microscopic “Borromean rings”—revolutionizing scientific understanding of chemical architecture. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry crowned their groundbreaking achievement: endowing molecules with controllable motion. Molecular machines: Factories of the microscopic world Inside living organisms, molecular machines are exquisitely precise instruments honed over billions of years of evolution. ATP synthase is nature’s perpetual motion machine. This tiny molecular motor converts tens of kilograms of ATP in the human body every day. Even more astonishingly, when energy is required, ATP synthase transforms into ATPase, hydrolyzing ATP to release energy—and its rotary motor spins in reverse.

Chemists Make 3D Molecules from Flat Precursors

1 day ago

University of Osaka researchers developed a novel reaction to synthesize complex 3D spirocycles from flat precursors using bridging sigma bonds. This method simplifies carbon insertion compared to traditional approaches relying on pi bonds.

cen

2026-10-20

Chemists Make 3D Molecules from Flat Precursors

Chemists Make 3D Molecules from Flat Precursors

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