News & Comment

Superatoms — particularly paramagnetic ones — can be difficult to isolate and study. Bulky organic ligands have been shown to stabilize a large copper-aluminium superatom with a unique open-shell electronic structure.

The design of machines in the nanodimesional space is advancing fast. Ben Feringa and co-workers now report on solvent-driven aggregations of molecular motors into nanodimesional bowl-shaped objects and show how molecular rotation can be controlled in such confined volumes.

QR Chem is a free resource that enables teachers and researchers to link audiences directly to three-dimensional renderings of molecules.

Digoxin is a widely used heart drug, but metabolism by bacteria in the human gut leads to variable efficacy. The enzyme responsible has now been identified and characterized.

Aquo complexes at salt surfaces feature in important processes such as salt dissolution and water desalination. Scanning tunnelling microscopy and atomic force microscopy have afforded the first real-space data concerning the structures and dynamics of single aquo complexes.

Controlling shape and size of noble-metal nanocrystals in an automated fashion is highly desirable for large-scale production of nanomaterials. Younan Xia and co-workers propose the design of a device for the automated synthesis of uniform nanocrystals, featuring a droplet reactor, online separation and purification capabilities.

This study identifies a human antibody fragment that recognizes i-motifs and shows that these DNA structures are present in the nuclei of human cells.

The archetypal hydride donor for unsaturated organics, LiAlH₄, has also been used in catalytic reductions. Indeed, LiAlH₄ has now been shown to be a precatalyst for imine hydrogenation under mild conditions.

The resolution of AFM images is highly sensitive to the atomic composition and structure of the tip. Harry Mönig and co-workers show that an oxygen-terminated copper tip can enable imaging at unprecedented resolution, allowing us to study molecular interactions in exquisite detail.

How do we introduce games into our classrooms and what kind of learning outcomes can we expect?

It is challenging to efficiently reduce CO₂, let alone do so with deliberate control of selectivity. A new study on metalloporphyrin-catalyzed CO₂ electroreduction reveals why some catalysts make CO and others make HCO₂H.

The development of a green route to allylic sulfones reveals that, counter-intuitively, water promotes a dehydration reaction.

Retrosyntheses of eight industrially relevant molecules have been planned by a computer and successfully executed by chemists in the laboratory.

The controlled deposition of single Pt atoms on a substrate affords a well-dispersed and robust CO oxidation catalyst, for which spectroscopic characterization can unravel detailed reaction pathways.