News & Comment

Hydrocyanines fluoresce in the presence of toxic oxygen species and could be used as in vivo probes

Levitation of a polymer bead by suspension in a paramagnetic solution between two magnets is sensitive to atomic-level changes in the polymer structure

Incredibly tough composite materials have been made by mimicking the fine plate-like structure of mollusc shells

The highly reactive germanium dication has been trapped by encapsulating it within a cryptand molecular cage

Both enantiomers of chiral tertiary alcohols can be made in a highly selective fashion from a single enantiomer of a secondary alcohol

One carbon nanotube inside another can act as a molecular motor providing both linear and rotary motion

The asymmetric total synthesis of bryostatin 16 is being used as a testing ground for atom economy and chemoselective strategies

Linked-microparticle rotors can be propelled in solution with controlled speed and direction using a precessing magnetic field

Rigid dendrimers of five or seventeen pyrene units have been made, with each unit twisted with respect to the others, making them individual chromophores

Ultrafast Raman spectroscopy can now be used to study the global motions of reacting polyatomic molecules and reveals how stilbene twists as it photoisomerizes

A two-dimensional, non-periodical network with rotational order but lacking translational symmetry is formed via hydrogen bonding

The synthesis of large diverse libraries of chemicals has been achieved using combinations of just six simple reactions

The design of materials that repel both water and nonpolar molecules can be led by the tuning of parameters related to a surface's physical and microstructual properties

The use of monodentate ligands results in structural fluxionality of metal complexes, and has been shown to be the key to success in asymmetric alkene metathesis reactions

Combined theoretical calculations and experimental data using organosilanes as a model for hydrogen reveal details on the reactivity of hydrogen with di-iron complexes

A sulfur-substituted organosulfurane — with a four-coordinate 'hypervalent' sulfur atom — is shown to be reversibly reducible

Large graphene sheets can be prepared by reduction of graphite oxide in pure hydrazine

A microfluidic 'chemistrode' device has been developed for stimulating, recording and analysing molecular signals

Tiny asymmetric additions to a large molecule can slow down diffusion by creating drag on a surface and, as expected, no directional bias is observed and the second law of thermodynamics survives

A study of the H₂ + Cl reaction using a crossed molecular beam resolves a previous discrepancy between experiment and theory related to the validity of the Born–Oppenheimer approximation