Reviews & Analysis

A nanographene compound incorporating five- and seven-membered rings is found to have a highly distorted non-planar structure and serves as a model system for studying the effect of defects in graphene sheets.

Chemical reactions with activation barriers generally slow to a halt in the extreme cold of dense interstellar clouds. Low-temperature experiments on the reaction of OH with methanol have now shown that below 200 K there is a major acceleration in the rate that can only be explained by enhanced quantum mechanical tunnelling through the barrier.

A crystalline polymer serves both as the seed and as one component of a diblock copolymer for the growth of unusual multi-armed micelles.

Selective reaction of one alcohol among many in complex molecules can be achieved by the use of a catalyst that forms a single covalent bond to a nearby functional group.

Selective conversion of C–H bonds into C–N bonds to form N-heterocycles would streamline the synthesis of these important structural motifs. Now, an iron(II) catalyst has been developed that can transform alkyl azides into cyclic secondary amines by controlling the iron imido intermediate to react only with the nearby aliphatic C–H bond.

Electrochemical sensing of the function of cell-membrane proteins has led to the identification of inhibitors that could provide a new approach to the identification of antimicrobial drugs.

Macrocycles have been a mainstay of supramolecular chemistry since its beginnings. The latest addition to this rank of host compounds is the result of a simple and high-yielding one-step method that produces a star-shaped macrocycle able to bind anionic guests — and has the potential for generating a wide range of anion-responsive structures.

Accurately representing molecules with many coupled unpaired electrons is currently impossible using conventional electronic-structure theories. Now, using a recently developed approach, the near-exact quantum wavefunction of the highly complex Mn₄CaO₅ cluster of photosystem II has been calculated.

Structure prediction methods that build in chemical knowledge offer the real possibility of materials design.

Heparin is an anionic polysaccharide that has tremendous clinical importance as an anticoagulant. Several dyes have been developed that can detect heparin, and the latest example — named Mallard Blue — has now been shown to have excellent sensing properties under biologically relevant conditions.

Chemists have long been interested in synthesizing compounds that push the boundaries of conventional molecular structure. Incorporating metal centres into the ring unit of highly strained and unsaturated cyclic molecules can help reduce strain — a tactic that has now been used to render a previously inaccessible metallapentalyne isolable.

Radiation of sufficient energy can knock out a tightly bound core-electron from the inner shell of a water molecule, leaving behind a short-lived, highly excited state. Now, through electron spectroscopy and theoretical simulations, these states have been observed to undergo previously unconsidered proton-mediated processes in solution.

For more than a decade, single-molecule magnets have relied on multinuclear transition metal clusters and lanthanide compounds. Now, a mononuclear, two-coordinate iron(I) complex has shown that single transition metals can compete with the lanthanides when certain design principles from magnetochemistry are borne in mind.

Protein drugs are important therapies for many different diseases, but very few can be administered orally. Now, a cationic dendronized polymer has been shown to stabilize a therapeutic protein for delivery to the gut.

A simple method to investigate the functional group compatibility and scope of new reaction methodology could improve the speed with which it is adopted by end-users, and have benefits in many related areas of chemical research.

The reduction of N₂ by iron and molybdenum complexes is a rapidly moving field. This Perspective discusses the key advances in the past two years. The recent discovery of carbide at the centre of the iron-molybdenum cofactor of nitrogenase is also described, along with the most compelling areas for continued research.

A pH-responsive inorganic membrane has been devised that acts as a gatekeeper for the transport of charged solutes into and out of its interior volume. This behaviour was further used to regulate an enzymatic reaction.

A combined theoretical and experimental approach has revealed that radicals can be significantly stabilized by the presence of a remote anionic site in the same molecule. This finding has implications for understanding and potentially controlling the reactivity of these important reactive intermediates.

The rechargeable Li–O₂ battery has low energy efficiency, which is mainly due to kinetic difficulties in the electrochemical oxidation of the insulating discharge product, Li₂O₂. Now a redox mediator, acting as an electron–hole transfer agent, has been used to promote this oxidation reaction.

The interactions between a virus capsid and its cargo are essential for viral infection as well as in the design of synthetic virus-like particles. Now a combination of analytical techniques has unravelled key steps in the transformation of a model virus and the release of its RNA cargo.