Browse Articles

Hydrogen atom transfer has an expanding role in synthesis, enabling direct C–H functionalization. This Review highlights the state-of-the-art design of phthalimide-N-oxyl catalysts, aiming to stimulate the development of the next generation of efficient and selective catalysts.

Defect passivation is a key concept for optimizing the performance of perovskite solar cells. This Review summarizes our understanding of defects in perovskites and highlights the most promising strategies and materials used for their passivation.

A review of Dan Egan’s book The Devil’s Element, where he explores the element that both makes plants grow and toxifies our water — phosphorus.

Late-stage modification of peptides with photoactivatable groups often weakens their binding interaction with target proteins. Now, this challenge has been addressed using large libraries of cyclic peptides with photocrosslinkers incorporated prior to screening.

Voronoi domains combined with modelled vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy can be used to investigate surfaces, interfaces, and hydrations shells at reduced computational costs.

A series of tricopper mono-, di- and tri-hydride complexes have been prepared and studied as a models of heterogeneous copper catalysts for carbon dioxide reductions.

The development of radical sulfurating reagents, which react with carbon-centred radicals to install a variety of organosulfur motifs in a highly selective manner, circumvents the need to preserve these often-vulnerable moieties through lengthy syntheses.

Anion effects can be well tuned to effectively improve their electrochemical performances in many aspects. This Review highlights the considerable effects of anions on surface and interface chemistry, mass transfer kinetics and solvation sheath structure across various energy storage devices.

Near-infrared spectroscopy combined with machine learning can predict the publication years of paper books from 1851 to 2000 with an unprecedented accuracy of 2 years.

Cyclopentadienyl ligands are cornerstones of organometallic chemistry and can have an active role in stoichiometric and catalytic reactions by facilitating the transfer of a proton, hydride or hydrogen atom.

When two phenyl rings are perfectly stacked in a cyclophane structure that is bridged by three helicene linkers, they lose some of their aromatic stability, even though the overall structure — with 78 π-electrons — is aromatic.

Nitrogenases are enzymes capable of reducing atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia. By better understanding their structure and the reaction mechanism, researchers can work towards artificial mimics that may replace the need for the energy-demanding Haber–Bosch process.

A highly stable glass has been prepared by the physical vapour deposition of two materials in equal amounts.

Enzyme conformational plasticity plays an important part in expanding the functional diversity of a limited repertoire of sequences. This Review discusses the role of flexible loops in enzyme evolution, focusing on both examples from natural evolution and engineering success stories.

The structure and properties of cyclopropane have intrigued chemists for decades, with an increasing demand for methods to functionalize these small carbocycles. This Review provides a summary of transition-metal-catalysed C–C bond formation at cyclopropanes, including cross-coupling with cyclopropyl nucleophiles or electrophiles, C–H functionalization and single-electron cross-coupling strategies.

Large language models such as GPT-4 have been approaching human-level ability across many expert domains. GPT-4 can accomplish complex tasks in chemistry purely from English instructions, which may transform the future of chemistry.

The synthesis of MXenes is generally constrained by poorly understood and largely uncontrollable chemical reactions. Now, with the use of chemical scissors and guest intercalants, new MXenes have been created with finely tuned microstructures, compositions and surface ligands.