Volume 3 Issue 4, April 2024

Artificial intelligence is used to automate the synthesis of single molecules using the tip of a scanning probe microscope, as well as to extract chemical information from these reactions.

Chemical selenylation of sulfur carrier proteins enables enzymatic incorporation of selenium into small molecules, thereby advancing a biocatalytic method for C–Se bond formation and chemoenzymatic selenometabolite synthesis.

Collaboration between synthesis laboratories requires procedures that are reproducible despite differences in equipment. Now, a digital standard for automated chemical synthesis reproduces results between distinct laboratory systems almost half a world apart.

A strategy for the precise and scalable synthesis of a series of M₁M₂ (where M is a metal ion) heteronuclear dual-atom catalysts (DACs) is proposed. Photoinduced electron accumulation at the M₁ sites results in the capture and reduction of M₂ cations close to the M₁ sites to generate DACs with high purity.

The direct carbonylation of alkanes with CO suffers from low conversion owing to equilibrium constraints. Now, a strategy is presented that combines reversible alkane carbonylation with an asymmetric transformation to overcome the equilibrium limitations, enabling the synthesis of chiral β- and α-amino ketones from alkanes, CO and anilines.

A general strategy for synthesizing high-nuclearity Cu(i) alkynide nanoclusters is developed, involving a tripodal polydentate phosphoramide ligand to stabilize the nanoclusters and an alkynol ligand for the facile in situ generation of the ethynediide (C₂^2–) dianion to template nanocluster formation. The Cu(i) alkynide nanocluster Cu62 exhibits good stability and activity as a catalyst for photobleaching.

The enantioselective synthesis of an inherently chiral molecular nanographene is demonstrated by precisely controlling the sequential generation of chiral elements in its structure. The final stereocontrolled graphitization step allows for the separate synthesis of both enantiomers, thus paving the way towards chirality controlled all-carbon nanographenes.

Synthesis of fuels and chemicals from renewable biomass is an important way to achieve sustainable development. This Review summarizes catalyst design for steering interfacial charge transfer and radical intermediate reactions in photocatalytic biorefineries.

Controlling the reaction pathway in electrochemical CO₂ reduction for the selective production of hydrocarbons or oxygenates is challenging. Now, control over atomic immiscibility in Cu and Cu–Ag alloyed catalysts can steer CO₂ reduction products from ethylene towards ethanol.

A chemist-intuited atomic robotic probe is developed that enables autonomous site-selective manipulation of magnetic nanographenes with atomic precision and aids in reaction mechanism elucidation through the incorporation of learned knowledge and artificial intelligence, leading to the intelligent synthesis of these materials.

Enzymatic C–Se bond forming reactions are rare. Now an enzymatic method for the synthesis of organoselenium compounds is reported using an ‘element engineering’ strategy. This method allows selenium analogues of cysteine, thiamine and a chuangxinmycin derivative to be produced using sulfur carrier proteins.

The use of a universal chemical programming language (χDL) to encode and execute synthesis procedures for a variety of chemical reactions is reported, including reductive amination, ring formation, esterification, carbon–carbon bond formation and amide coupling. These procedures are validated and repeated in two international laboratories and on three independent robots.

A navigation and positioning strategy is proposed for the scalable synthesis of a series of heteronuclear dual-atom catalysts via irradiation. It is shown that photo-induced electron accumulation at the M₁ site can attract an M₂ metal cation, forming heteronuclear dimers with high purity.

Alkane carbonylation through photocatalytic alkyl radical addition to CO is a challenge. Now, an equilibrium-leveraging strategy which combines the direct carbonylation of alkanes with CO with onwards enantioselective transformations is reported, providing an enantioselective method for the synthesis of β-amino and α-amino ketones.

The synthesis of high-nuclearity copper(I) nanoclusters remains challenging due to their low stability. Now four high-nuclearity Cu(I) nanoclusters have been successfully isolated by introducing a bifunctional phosphoramide ligand into the Cu/RC≡CH assembly system, enhancing complex stability through cooperative bonding.

Precipitation of target functional materials from water is sensitive to precursor selection and aqueous electrochemistry (pH and redox potential), where competition between thermodynamics and kinetics can yield undesired impurity phases. Now, a theoretical framework to identify optimal synthesis conditions of target materials is developed and validated against a literature dataset and direct experiments.

The development of strategies to access boronate esters from ubiquitous aliphatic C−H bonds is of long-standing interest in the synthesis community. Now a photoelectrochemically driven C(sp³)−H borylation reaction of alkanes is developed, in which iron, an abundant earth-based resource, is employed as a photoelectrochemical catalyst.

The enantioselective folding of a planar nanographene layer is achieved in three steps: introduction of chiral information, enantiospecific ring closing with the removal of oxygen atoms and an enantiospecific Scholl reaction. The Scholl reaction introduces a helical bend in an all-carbon bilayer nanographene.