Building on work by Kontsevich, Soibelman, Nagao and Efimov, we prove the positivity of quantum cluster coefficients for all skew-symmetric quantum cluster algebras, via a proof of a conjecture first suggested by Kontsevich on the purity of mixed Hodge structures arising in the theory of cluster mutation of spherical collections in 3-Calabi-Yau categories. The result implies positivity, as well as the stronger Lefschetz property conjectured by Efimov, and also the classical positivity

more »

... of Fomin and Zelevinsky, recently proved by Lee and Schiffler. Closely related to these results is a categorified "no exotics" type theorem for cohomological Donaldson-Thomas invariants, which we discuss and prove in the appendix.