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The confined geometry of nanopores enables a wealth of chemistry and analysis to be conducted at the single-molecule scale. Yi-Lun Ying, Aleksandar P. Ivanov and Vincent Tabard-Cossa report on recent developments discussed at the 2020 Nanopore Electrochemistry Meeting.
Superheavy elements are short-lived and only available on a single-atom level, making their chemical properties very challenging to study. Now, through their co-precipitation with samarium, single atoms of rutherfordium have been shown to form hydroxide complexes but not ammine ones.
The synthesis of molecular knots has been a major achievement in the field of chemical topology, but only a few relatively simple ones have been made so far. A route based on a weaving approach has now been used to make a seven-crossing knot and could offer a route to more complicated structures.
Sophisticated drug delivery systems are as essential to modern medicine as drugs themselves. Now, polymer mechanochemistry in sonicated solutions has been used to activate drugs in three different systems. These results offer a promising approach that can be tailored to diverse molecular structures of modern pharmaceuticals.
Metal-catalysed hydroformylations efficiently convert feedstock alkenes into aldehydes, though typically relatively simple ones. Now, the palladium-catalysed fragmentation of acid chlorides followed by reassembly with alkynes and silanes has been shown to form valuable, highly substituted α,β-unsaturated aldehydes.
