In 1920, at age 39 and the peak of his professional carrier, one of the most distinguished organic chemists of his generation, Hermann Staudinger, claimed that natural and synthetic polymers are covalent macromolecules rather than colloidal aggregates. This idea initiated chain reactions supporting and dismissing the covalent macromolecular concept. The story of his 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is

Download : Download high-res image (475KB) Download : Download full-size imageDr. Charlie McTernan is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow and a Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he works in the group of Prof. Jonathan Nitschke on the design and synthesis of asymmetric molecular capsules. In 2013, he received his MChem from the University of Oxford, where he

Metal-oxide interfaces are ubiquitous and non-innocent in heterogeneous catalysis. In the October issue of Chem, Chen and co-workers show how the electronic nature of oxygen in the metallic- and bimetallic-oxide interfaces drives the reaction of ethane and CO2 to either syngas (CO/H2) (dry reforming of ethane) or ethylene, CO, and H2O (oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane).

The design of synthetic analogs to biological molecular machines offers a new vista for chemists. In this issue of Chem, McTernan et al. report an artificial synthesizer reminiscent of natural assemblers. This molecular machine is capable of forming sequence-defined oligomers by the Wittig reaction, a transformation not found in nature.

In this issue of Chem, Wang and co-workers report the fine-tuning of product selectivity over facet-engineered TiO2. They evaluate three morphology-controlled TiO2 nanocrystals in the photocatalytic upgrading of biomass-derived platform compounds in methanol. Hydrogenation and reductive coupling products are produced in high yields over oxygen-vacancy-rich and -vacancy-free TiO2 surfaces, respectively

In this issue of Chem, Palacín, Ballester, and co-workers discuss the properties of a calix[4]pyrrole cavitand capable of facilitiating the selective transport of L-proline across liposomal membranes and which can contribute to the uptake of this amino acid in cells.

Recently in Nature Communications, Profs. Dan Wang, Suojiang Zhang, and colleagues report a highly versatile drug-delivery platform showing a promising step toward a sequential-release capability. In careful detail, they report drug-release profiles, mass-transport phenomena, and applications for enhanced bacterial sterilization.

Download : Download high-res image (473KB) Download : Download full-size imageRaj Pandya is currently an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow in the research groups of Dr. Akshay Rao and Prof. Ulrich Keyser at the University of Cambridge, where he also completed his PhD in July 2020. His research interests lie in the dynamics and transport of quasi-particles—such as excitons, polaritons, and ions—in a range

The selective conversion of CO2 into desired hydrocarbon products remains a challenge in photocatalysis. In this issue of Chem, Feng and colleagues report a strong-magnetic-field-assisted strategy for forming active low-coordinate (100) facets on TiO2 nanotubes, enabling selective photoconversion of CO2 into the C2 product C2H5OH under visible light.

An innovative approach furnishing valuable molecules from simple precursors via C–H functionalization, photocatalysis as a sustainable activation mode, no metal catalyst, and CO2 valorization: these are the salient features of the carboxylation of diverse arenes and styrenes developed by Bergonzini, König, and co-workers in this issue of Chem.

Facet engineering is essential for understanding the overall water-splitting chemistry of photocatalysts, but detailed investigation of polymeric semiconductors is rarely reported. Recently in Nature Catalysis, Wang and colleagues reported the synthesis of highly crystallized carbon nitride with different facets and achieved a molecular-level study of their reactivity.