Reviews & Analysis

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This Review highlights recent advances in the synthesis and application of mirror-image proteins. Emphasis is placed on strategies for accessing these biomolecules, their use in protein crystallography, drug discovery and efforts towards the generation of mirror-image life.

Flexible molecules are present in solutions as dynamic conformational ensembles. This Review examines the theory and practice of nuclear magnetic resonance-based ensemble determination of flexible mid-sized molecules in solution, providing practical guidelines and benchmarking datasets as well as highlighting the scope of available methods.

Earth-abundant halide perovskites are the state-of-the-art absorbers for photovoltaic devices, but their successful commercial use is hampered by phase instabilities that lead to inactivation. This Review examines how to enhance phase stability through the use of in operando analysis and the opportunities for continued material development.

Silk chemistries, mechanisms and biomaterial designs are discussed. Utility of chemically modified silk for different biomedical applications such as tissue engineering, adhesives, drug delivery and biosensors, among others, is highlighted. Different design strategies to improve biomedical outcomes are also addressed.

The characterization of terahertz dynamics in molecular materials is a relatively new technique, but has proved valuable for understanding various material functions. This Review highlights some of the most important developments in this cutting-edge area of materials chemistry.

Small-molecule inhibitors offer many advantages for manipulating the gut microbiome, both as tool compounds and as potential therapeutics. This Review highlights recent examples of inhibitors that target gut bacterial enzymatic activity as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with their design and development.

Open droplet microfluidic systems have unique advantages; for example, the droplets are accessible and the systems translate well into biomedical research. This Review highlights different types of open droplet microfluidic system in chemistry and biology and discusses their physical concepts and key applications.

Here, the utility of nitrogen-atom transfer chemistry is highlighted, the aspects that dictate nitride philicity discussed, and the reactivity of metal nitrides towards substrate functionalization examined. Emerging strategies and the remaining obstacles to harnessing nitrogen-atom transfer for nitrogenation of organic small molecules are presented.

Arynes are curious intermediates for synthesis because they are elusive, fleeting and neutral. This Review focuses on one of the most challenging issues in aryne chemistry, catalytic asymmetric reactions using aryne intermediates, and presents the recent advances in this field.

This Review focuses on the fundamental reasons for the increasing role of alkynes in radical cascades and highlights the unique opportunities provided by the inherent structural, energetic and stereoelectronic features of a carbon–carbon triple bond for the controlled design of cascade reactions.

Chiral molecules in biosamples are promising biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prognosis. The authors describe techniques for detecting and quantifying small-molecule enantiomers and approaches to improving these techniques.