Green chemistry articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • Article |

    Two semi-synthetic processes for the production of the antimalarial natural product artemisinin have been developed by applying the principles of green chemistry. Solvent manipulation allows catalyst recycling and reduction of waste, ultimately leading to a purification-free process with lower environmental and economic costs; a potential contribution to the world-wide fight against malaria.

    • Zacharias Amara
    • , Jessica F. B. Bellamy
    •  & Michael W. George

  • Article |

    Photoelectrochemical water-splitting produces hydrogen at the cathode and oxygen at the anode. The anode reaction is, however, kinetically unfavourable. Now, reduction of water at the cathode has been combined with oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural at the anode resulting in a photoelectrochemical cell that produces fuel and a useful platform chemical.

    • Hyun Gil Cha
    •  & Kyoung-Shin Choi

  • Commentary |

    Developing cleaner chemical processes often involves sophisticated flow-chemistry equipment that is not available in many economically developing countries. For reactions where it is the data that are important rather than the physical product, the networking of chemists across the internet to allow remote experimentation offers a viable solution to this problem.

    • Ryan A. Skilton
    • , Richard A. Bourne
    •  & Martyn Poliakoff

  • News & Views |

    Lignin is an abundant renewable resource, but its intrinsic recalcitrant nature has so far hampered its conversion into higher value chemicals. Now, a two-step strategy, oxidation followed by bond cleavage, has been shown to deconstruct lignin into high yields of low-molecular-weight aromatics.

    • Pieter C. A. Bruijnincx
    •  & Bert M. Weckhuysen

  • Review Article |

    Energy storage using batteries offers a solution to the intermittent nature of energy production from renewable sources; however, such technology must be sustainable. This Review discusses battery development from a sustainability perspective, considering the energy and environmental costs of state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries and the design of new systems beyond Li-ion. Images: batteries, car, globe: © iStock/Thinkstock.

    • D. Larcher
    •  & J-M. Tarascon

  • News & Views |

    Nanoscopic templates functionalized with light-reactive chromophores could ultimately be used to store solar energy and later release it as heat. Now, it has been shown that packing the chromophores together increases both storage capacity and lifetime.

    • Nathan R. Neale

  • Article |

    Radical polymerization of a metastable lactone intermediate — formed from carbon dioxide and butadiene using a palladium catalyst — produces a high-CO2-content (29 wt%) polymer. This approach circumvents the thermodynamic and kinetic barriers typically associated with direct copolymerization of carbon dioxide and olefins, and can also be applied to one-pot co- and terpolymerization of carbon dioxide and 1,3-butadienes.

    • Ryo Nakano
    • , Shingo Ito
    •  & Kyoko Nozaki

  • Article |

    Hydrogen is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels, but the slow rate of the hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline fuel cells hinders their development. It is now proposed that bifunctional materials can be devised to offer the optimal balance between hydrogen and hydroxyl adsorption, thus significantly reducing the amount of precious metal on the anode.

    • Dusan Strmcnik
    • , Masanobu Uchimura
    •  & Nenad M. Markovic

  • News & Views |

    Methanol — an important potential fuel and synthetic building block — can be produced via the hydrogenation of carbonates and carbamates using a pincer ruthenium(II) catalyst.

    • Pierre H. Dixneuf

  • Article |

    Producing methanol — useful as both a fuel and a synthetic building block — from carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide has been achieved using homogeneous catalytic hydrogenation of carbonates, carbamates and formates. The catalyst is a dearomatized ruthenium(II) pincer complex and the reaction proceeds efficiently under mild conditions.

    • Ekambaram Balaraman
    • , Chidambaram Gunanathan
    •  & David Milstein

  • Article |

    Small nanoparticles with controlled morphologies can be prepared for catalysis applications by colloidal methods using stabilizing ligands. A solvent-extraction method has now been described that removes the ligands without affecting the morphology of the nanoparticles, or their catalytic activity over a range of reactions.

    • Jose A. Lopez-Sanchez
    • , Nikolaos Dimitratos
    •  & Graham J. Hutchings

  • Research Highlights |

    A thermally induced rearrangement of a triazole that releases nitrogen gas is the key to the development of a self-extinguishing polymer.

    • Stephen Davey

  • Research Highlights |

    The use of dyes as catalyst initiators means that they are incorporated into polymer molecules, which removes the need for harsh post-dyeing treatments.

    • Neil Withers

  • Review Article |

    Most synthetic polymers are made from petroleum and their production is currently not sustainable. RAFT polymerization has emerged as a powerful technique to control the synthesis of such polymers, thus expanding further their applications. This Review discusses the sustainability of RAFT in terms of process and materials.

    • Mona Semsarilar
    •  & Sébastien Perrier

  • News & Views |

    A highly basic gold catalyst has been shown to mediate the reaction of aromatic C–H bonds with carbon dioxide. The reaction provides a potential method of fixing atmospheric carbon dioxide and producing valuable chemical products.

    • Derek M Dalton
    •  & Tomislav Rovis

  • Research Highlights |

    A cage-like structure that is rapidly assembled from simple organic components is shown to selectively adsorb carbon dioxide gas.

    • Stephen Davey

  • Research Highlights |

    Mechanistic analysis and reaction optimization provides access to a variety of useful chemical building blocks from biogenic feedstocks.

    • Stephen Davey

  • Perspective |

    Sunlight is potentially an ideal green 'reagent' for chemical synthesis, but poor absorption by organic substrates makes direct solar photochemistry generally inefficient. Here, recent progress in the use of the simple organometallic complexes to harness the power of the sun is summarized, and prospects for the future of this exciting field highlighted.

    • Tehshik P. Yoon
    • , Michael A. Ischay
    •  & Juana Du

  • Research Highlights |

    Strontium-doped lanthanum perovskite oxides can help to remove harmful NOx pollution from diesel exhaust.

    • Neil Withers

  • In Your Element |

    Ram Mohan looks at how bismuth — a remarkably harmless element among the toxic heavy metals in the periodic table — has sparked interest in areas varying from medicinal to industrial chemistry.

    • Ram Mohan

  • Article |

    Gold nanoparticles can catalyse oxidation reactions in remarkably mild conditions and have excited much interest in recent years. With experimental studies disagreeing over the size of the most active nanoparticles, density functional calculations have now shown that limiting the particle size to below two nanometres is crucial.

    • Olga Lopez-Acevedo
    • , Katarzyna A. Kacprzak
    •  & Hannu Häkkinen

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