Articles in 2010

Michelle Francl wonders just what we're buying — and buying into — when we shop for our laboratories.

Understanding how biosilica forms is crucial to our knowledge of this important biomaterial. Now, the role of collagen as structuring agent for the metre-long spicules of a primitive glass sponge has been revealed and found to have an unusual peptide motif.

Uranium oxo groups are very inert, in contrast with many transition metal oxo compounds that can carry out reactions that are difficult to achieve with other reagents. Now, the controlled lithiation of a ‘Pacman’ complex is shown to activate the uranium oxo group towards functionalization and single electron transfer.

The co-existence of superconductivity and magnetism in single compounds is rare, and heterostructures containing both properties have only been made with complex techniques. Now, a molecular-building-block approach has been applied to match organic and inorganic layers to produce multifunctional materials.

Chemically derived graphene oxide (GO) has recently moved on from simply being a graphene precursor to attracting interest for its own properties. This Review discusses how the presence of oxygenated groups and domains of sp²- and sp³-hybridized carbons makes GO tunable and promising for various physical and biological applications.

The self-assembly of planar molecules at interfaces can produce porous nanostructured surfaces that allow the selective trapping of guest molecules. By careful choice of both network and guest molecule it is possible to promote controlled, reversible growth perpendicular to the surface in the form of a molecular bilayer.

A thermally induced rearrangement of a triazole that releases nitrogen gas is the key to the development of a self-extinguishing polymer.

The performance of dye-sensitized solar cells that use non-conventional redox mediators has been improved by decreasing the steric bulk of the mediator while increasing that of the associated dye.

The mutual and specific recognition that can be exhibited between 'host' and 'guest' molecules occurs over very small length scales, but this phenomenon has now been demonstrated using macroscopic gels that self-assemble before your eyes.

Specific molecular-recognition interactions are often used to build supramolecular architectures on very small length scales — typically those of molecules or macromolecules. Now, it has been shown that a host-guest system based on cyclodextrin rings and hydrocarbon groups can be used to direct the self-assembly of objects from macroscopic gel-based building blocks.

Phenylene oligomers are shown to form left- and right-handed helices in solution, but a chiral symmetry-breaking process occurs on crystallization to give a non-racemic mixture of crystals that each contains only one enantiomer. One-electron oxidation of the oligomers suppresses the interconversion of the mirror-image helices in solution, locking-in one conformation and leading to chiral memory effects.

In the key step of a natural product synthesis, two diastereomers of an intermediate react with opposite stereo- and regioselectivity to provide a single product enantiomer.

The use of dyes as catalyst initiators means that they are incorporated into polymer molecules, which removes the need for harsh post-dyeing treatments.

An organocatalytic method for constructing biaryls joins an increasing number of articles reporting metal-free analogues to reactions that traditionally have required a transition-metal catalyst. What does it take to prove that metal is not involved, and does it really matter?

Large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or nanographenes have huge potential for organic electronics applications, but it is challenging to synthesize them in a controlled way. Now, a surface chemical route has been used to produce tailored nanographenes with atomically precise control over the final structure.

Using a chemical model, the binding of a monovalent ligand and the clustering of a membrane-embedded receptor are shown to be closely related processes that modulate each other without the contribution of any apparent multivalence effect.

Introducing a layer of gold alloy between the outer platinum shell and palladium core of a nanoparticle improves its activity as a catalyst for oxygen reduction.

Single crystals of chromium silicide have been prepared that grow into highly crystalline nanowebs.

Benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamides are known to self-assemble via intramolecular hydrogen bonding into helical columnar aggregates. Here it is shown that the introduction of a stereocentre by an isotopic substitution — replacing hydrogen for deuterium on the methylene groups next to the amide — is sufficient to direct the helicity of the formed aggregate.

DNA has been used as a building block to make a wide variety of molecular architectures, but it remains difficult to make functional structures from this particular construction material. Now, a strategy for the assembly of hybrid RNA–DNA nanostructures has been described, which offers the possibility of combining the programmability of DNA with the rich functionality of RNA.