One-dimensional carbon chains are highly reactive allotropes that have been synthesized to date only in the protective environment of carbon nanotubes. Here, the author uses DFT simulations to show that carbon chains can be encapsulated in α-MnO₂ containing open structural channels which stabilize cumulene chains due to their structural commensurability, whereas the triple bonds in polyyne chains exhibit excessive steric repulsion to the oxide ions bordering the channel.

Electrochemical reduction of carbonyl groups is a promising sustainable route for converting biomass-based compounds into value-added products. Here, the authors investigate the electrochemical reduction of the model reactants formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone on single-site M–N–C catalysts (M = Fe, Co and Ni), gaining mechanistic insight into the role that the nature of the metal center plays on the selectivity of these carbonyl reduction reactions.

Supersaturated amorphous drug–salt–polymer systems are known to improve the aqueous solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs as well as their bioavailability, however, the rational optimization of such systems is largely unexplored. Here, the authors optimize the polymer and salt combination for the drug celecoxib and achieve improved biopharmaceutical performance by experimental and computational characterization of their amorphous solid dispersions.

D-Amino acids are widely present in nature and display diverse physiological functions, however, their large-scale synthesis remains challenging for specific amino acids. Here, the authors design hyper-thermostable ancestral L-amino acid oxidases (HTAncLAAO2), catalyzing the chemoenzymatic synthesis of D-tryptophan from L-tryptophan at a preparative scale.

The simultaneous electroreduction of carbon dioxide and nitrate is a promising and environmentally benign route to urea production, but achieving high selectivity for urea electrosynthesis via this route remains challenging. Here, CuO_xZnO_y electrodes are shown to enable the efficient and selective production of urea under mild conditions, with the efficiency found to strongly depend on the metal ratio within the catalyst composition.

Heterogeneous reaction of NO₂ with atmospheric humic like substances is a potentially important source of volatile organic compounds, but the role of ubiquitous water-soluble aerosol components in this chemistry remains largely unexplored. Here, secondary electrospray ionization ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry is used to obtain real-time measurements of VOCs formed during the heterogeneous reaction of gas phase NO₂ and a solution containing gallic acid as a model for moderately acidic aerosol particles.

Andrew Goodwin is Professor of Materials Chemistry and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the dual aspects of flexibility and disorder in functional materials, and his group of about 10–15 researchers is based in Oxford’s Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory.

Dr Camille Bishop is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Wayne State University. She obtained her PhD in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where she prepared glasses with liquid crystal-like packing using physical vapor deposition, after obtaining her B.S. in chemistry from the University of Chicago.

Nancy Scott Burke Williams is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges in Claremont, California, where she has been in the faculty since 2003. She was born in Puyallup, WA to Burke and Nancy Williams, from whom she takes most of her names.

Abhik Ghosh grew up in Kolkata, India, and is a Professor of inorganic and materials chemistry at UiT—The Arctic University of Norway. His research interests lie at the intersection of inorganic, materials and computational chemistry.

Dr Jovan Dragelj completed his undergraduate and Master’s studies in chemistry in Belgrade, Serbia, after which he worked as a chemistry teacher and researcher at the University of Belgrade. In 2019, he earned his PhD in computational chemistry from Freie Universität Berlin and then pursued postdoctoral studies at Technische Universität Berlin. His research during this period spanned diverse areas, from non-covalent interactions to biocatalysis, with a major focus on studying cytochrome c oxidase and hydrogenase enzymes through multiscale modeling approaches.

Polly Arnold is a Professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US. Polly’s research focuses on exploratory synthetic chemistry. Such knowledge underpins the discovery of catalysts and our understanding of the behavior of nuclear waste.