Review Articles

Catalysts based on rotaxanes and catenanes are receiving increased attention, driven by high-profile examples with desirable properties. We survey this emerging field organized by the effect of mechanical bonding on activity, chemoselectivity and stereoselectivity to inspire future investigations and applications.

Protein functionalities rely strongly on their specific chemical and spatial structure. This Review dives into the hyphenation of native separation techniques with mass spectrometry to study protein (higher order) structure and functionality.

Sulfonyl fluorides are highly electrophilic and yet they exhibit stability towards hydrolysis under physiological conditions. This unique combination makes them highly attractive in chemical biology. This Review looks at the emerging synthetic approaches and applications for this intriguing functional group.

The chiral arrangement of inorganic nanoparticles brings new properties and functionalities that are distinct compared with the individual building blocks. This Review discusses the recent progress in the preparation, properties and emerging applications of self-assembled inorganic chiral superstructures.

Natural products and their synthesis have always fascinated organic chemists, frequently providing the inspiration and testing ground for new synthetic methods. This Review considers examples of natural products that were prepared first synthetically and predicted to be natural products prior to their isolation from nature.

Heterogeneous catalysis is a diverse and highly interdisciplinary field in chemistry, which is essential in our modern society. This Review highlights how understanding the active site in catalysts will help in their rational design — an essential step in a transition to renewable energy and a circular economy.

The activity of proteins can be controlled with azobenzene-based photoswitches. This Review describes the design of such artificial protein constructs and how their phototriggered, non-equilibrium response is studied using transient infrared spectroscopy, with an emphasis on ligand binding and unbinding processes as well as allosteric signalling.

This Review describes the de novo design of metalloproteins, which perform numerous functions essential to life. By understanding the relationship between the symmetry of the protein structure and the metal active site, we can design novel, functional metalloproteins from scratch.

The study of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) using time-resolved techniques is relatively unexplored, despite being key to an understanding of their chemical and physical properties. This Review summarizes the applicable techniques and how they can be used to probe MOF dynamics.

This Review establishes a unifying structure–property relationship among chemical composition, centrosymmetry breaking, lattice anharmonicity, ferroelectricity, dielectric screening and the Rashba effect in metal halide perovskites from the perspective of stereochemical expression of ns² electron pairs on group IV metal cations.

Over the past decade, advances in azobenzenes have revolutionized their application potential, going beyond traditional uses as dyes and ultraviolet photoswitches. This Review describes breakthroughs in the development of red-light-photoswitchable azobenzenes and emerging applications in photopharmacology, photoswitchable adhesives and biodegradable systems for drug delivery.

The current scope and limitations, path to the clinic and therapeutic applications of long-wavelength-responsive, light-activated drugs are discussed in this Review.

The exploitation of non-covalent interactions in carbohydrate chemistry is gaining traction. This Review summarizes recent developments in harnessing non-covalent interactions in selective carbohydrate synthesis, and highlights future directions.

This Review describes bioinspired biomimetic polymers that recapitulate macro-scale to atomic-scale features of naturally occurring materials. Particular attention is paid to biobased concepts, with an eye to having renewable supplies of self-healing, stimuli-responsive and/or antimicrobial materials.

Uncontrolled bleeding is a major cause of death, incentivizing the development of biomaterials that aid haemostasis and wound healing. This Review highlights the active components and forms of haemostatic materials, with a focus on their chemical design, and considers future trends in their development.

N-Heterocyclic carbenes continue to mesmerize scientists and open up new research avenues for academia and industry. Here, we provide a concise and up-to-date overview of N-heterocyclic carbenes, encompassing their history, properties and applications in transition metal catalysis, main group chemistry, on-surface chemistry and organocatalysis.

This Review describes recent work where scanning probe techniques are used to effect the formation and cleavage of chemical bonds. We contextualize this progress in terms of single-molecule manipulation and summarize implications for synthetic chemistry and future studies.

Solid-state NMR is useful to study the local structure, dynamics and dopant speciation in metal halide perovskites. This Perspective describes the practical aspects of the method that make it broadly applicable to optoelectronic materials.

Interrupting a reaction reroutes the outcome of a known chemical process. This Review highlights advances that enable the redirection of common intermediates in organic chemistry to new outcomes.

Transient directing groups enable selective metal-catalysed C–H functionalization reactions to give diverse products. These directing groups form and dissociate in situ, such that their use is an efficient route to complex organics, examples of which are summarized in this Review.