Collection 

Open Questions in Chemistry

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Open

In spite of decades of research and the enormous progress made, chemists continue to grapple with poorly understood aspects of the world around us. Indeed, many fundamental questions remain— will we ever get to the bottom of the different structures of ice, or pinpoint the origins of life on Earth, or obtain a full picture of the complexity of carbon-based molecules in space?

This Collection aims to uncover open questions across the breadth of the chemical sciences. Each Comment article provides an overview of a focused field of research, identifies key open questions, and gives expert opinion on how challenges in answering these questions might be overcome. Our hope is that this series will be of interest to the chemistry community as a whole, and that it will stimulate those working in or adjacent to the research fields that are covered to think about some of the open questions that invite further study.

While the below Comment articles delve into a wide range of important and exciting topics, when one considers the breadth of ongoing research in fundamental areas of chemistry, we have only just begun to scratch the surface. We look forward to publishing more in this series in the months and years to come, and invite experts to submit their own contributions to this exciting Collection.

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Editorial

Organic chemistry and chemical biology

Inorganic chemistry

Physical chemistry