Coordination chemistry articles from across Nature Portfolio

The heavy analogues of ynolates or ketenyl anions have not yet been studied. Here the synthesis, isolation and characterization of a sila-ketenyl anion, the silicon analogue of a ketenyl anion, are reported through the reaction of silyl-radical anions with CO.

Stereogenic sp³-hybridized carbon centres are the principal building blocks of chiral organic molecules. Usually, these centres are configurationally fixed. Now, low-energy pericyclic rearrangements have been used to create rigid cage molecules with fluxional sp³-stereochemistry, influencing chiral information transfer. The sp³-carbon stereochemistry of the cages is inverted through strain-assisted Cope rearrangements.

In many environmental or clinical settings, it is useful to detect and quantify analytes instantaneously in situ. This protocol describes how to develop metal–organic frameworks for selective, sensitive analysis by luminescence.

Carbon-free analogues of metallocene with homoleptic arsenic or antimony ligands have remained experimentally elusive, especially analogues of higher nuclearity. Now, sandwich-type clusters containing three-dimensional icosahedral metal centres and As₅^– or Sb₅^– ligands have been synthesized.

Synthesis can be used to harness excited states and molecular functional materials. Supramolecular chemistry can provide an additional dimension of control to the excited states and expand the library of excited-state functional materials.

Symmetry breaking charge separations have been found to be important for charge transfer in bacteriochlorophyll pairs in photosynthetic reaction centers, but engineering symmetry breaking charge separations in artificial dimers of related chromophores is challenging. Here, the authors report the design and synthesis of aromatic-bridged as well as meso-meso-linked BF₂-smaragdyrin dimers that exhibit symmetry-breaking charge transfer properties.