News & Comment

Metal–organic frameworks with certain compositions can exist as glasses. Processable materials featuring intrinsic porosity are rare and are expected to be invaluable in chemical separations.

³⁹Ar is an ideal tracer for radioactive dating in the 50–1000 year range of deep ocean circulations. However, extremely low concentrations of ³⁹Ar in the ocean make the dating process long and costly. Applied quantum technologies can, however, drastically simplify ocean dating procedures.

A prodrug version of a gene expression inducer has been designed that is activated under hypoxic conditions in bacterial cells.

Oxidation states and radii of cations dictate their arrangement in double perovskite oxides and influence the material’s properties. Isovalent cations are known to be disordered in double perovskite oxides, but an unusual ordering of Fe³⁺ and Al³⁺ has been found in Bi₂FeAlO₆.

Facile isotopic labelling of carbon has been demonstrated using Pd-catalysed exchange of an acid chloride carbonyl with carbon monoxide.

Martian sediments and meteorites contain a complex mixture of inorganic and organic materials. The identities and localizations of these species point to a mechanism of organic synthesis that begins with the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide.

Pristine molybdenum disulfide undergoes oxidation at its basal plane, such that some S atoms are replaced with O atoms. This new doped monolayer exhibits improved activity for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution.

Mechanical gating of a photochemical reaction has been realized by constructing a norbornene that, when subjected to tensile stress, undergoes fission into a UV-light-sensitive diarylethene.

Chiroptical molecular switches change chirality in response to light. Christian Petermayer and Henry Dube report a new type of hemiindigo photoswitches that feature axial chiral substituents and are characterized by an unusual decoupling of the absorption and the circular dichroism (CD) spectra.

Certain frustrated Lewis pairs can undergo single electron transfer to give frustrated radical pairs. Such radical pairs have been implicated as important species in the activation of small molecules such as dihydrogen.

Atomically thin materials that are both electrically conductive and magnetic are highly desirable. Pedersen, Clérac and co-workers report a new layered coordination polymer — CrCl₂(pyrazine)₂ — that exhibits both conductive and magnetic-type properties.

A full grasp of chemistry requires students to be able to connect microscopic reality with symbolic representations. Immersive virtual reality provides a solution for those who need a tangible link between these representations.

Following binding kinetics over time rather than relying on differences in free-energy of binding enables detection of single molecules of mutant DNA with an estimated specificity of 99.99999%.

Enzymes can serve as blueprints for artificial catalysts, the preparation of which may involve anything from biosynthesis of mutants to chemical synthesis of active site mimics.

Threshold concepts are the tricky ideas that underpin so much knowledge. In teaching them, it is important to recognize that a correct answer is not necessarily evidence of understanding.

A total synthesis of xishacorene B starts from a chiral pool molecule and exploits a C–C activation reaction to form the core structure.

Water–surface interactions are strongly influenced by the polar or non-polar nature of the chemical groups on the surface. Jacob Monroe and Scott Shell used molecular dynamics simulations and genetic algorithms to show that the specific patterns of such functionalities effect water dynamics.

Iridium chelates are attractive catalysts for asymmetric transfer hydrogenation. The mode through which a chelating ligand binds iridium turns out to have a striking effect on catalytic activity and enantioselectivity.

A team of French and UK researchers have used DNA to template a key photocatalysed cycloaddition reaction in the total synthesis of a marine natural product.

Isoporous block copolymer films have useful morphological features, but lack the conductivity necessary for chemiresistive sensing. Combining such films with carbon nanotubes affords new porous composites, whose conductivity is sensitive to guest molecules.