Volume 5 Issue 9, September 2021

It has so far proved difficult to characterize halogen bonds in solution. A new and simple approach is to use scalar coupling between atoms in a halogen bond donor as a measure of bond strengths with diverse acceptors.

The supramolecular assembly of oligomers encoded with complementary recognition units enables duplex hybridization with helical structure.

Molecular decoders are single host matrices able to differentiate analytes by their distinct structural accommodations. Ten years ago, Susumu Kitagawa and co-workers described the prototypical molecular decoder and paved the way for molecular sensing. We now revisit this seminal study and discuss some of the advances that have followed.

Recent findings on the skeletal rearrangement of polycyclic aromatics under oxidative and acidic conditions are envisioned to help development of these Scholl reactions into a more useful and versatile method for synthesizing polycyclic aromatics on the basis of rational design rather than luck.

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.

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.

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.

Although a stalwart in materials science, electron diffraction has only recently become popular for characterizing molecular structures. This Perspective describes practical aspects of the method, which affords complementary information to X-ray and neutron diffraction.