Two Q&As in this issue consider aspects of chemical safety in industry and academia. And when it comes to the latter, a Review Article concludes that much more research is required to better understand — and improve — safety in academic laboratories.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Singlet fission promises to surpass the Shockley–Queisser limit for single-junction solar cell efficiency through the production of two electron–hole pairs per incident photon. However, this promise has not been fulfilled because singlet fission produces two low-energy triplet excitons that have been unexpectedly difficult to dissociate into free charges. To understand this phenomenon, we study charge separation from triplet excitons in polycrystalline pentacene using an electrochemical series of 12 different guest electron-acceptor molecules with varied reduction potentials. We observe separate optima in the charge yield as a function of driving force for singlet and triplet excitons, including inverted regimes for the dissociation of both states. Molecular acceptors can thus provide a strategic advantage to singlet fission solar cells by suppressing singlet dissociation at optimal driving forces for triplet dissociation. However, even at the optimal driving force, the rate constant for charge transfer from the triplet state is surprisingly small, ~107 s−1, presenting a previously unidentified obstacle to the design of efficient singlet fission solar cells.

Photoredox catalysis, especially in combination with transition metal catalysis, can produce redox states of transition metal catalysts to facilitate challenging bond formations that are not readily accessible in conventional redox catalysis. For arene functionalization, metallophotoredox catalysis has successfully made use of the same leaving groups as those valuable in conventional cross-coupling catalysis, such as bromide. Yet the redox potentials of common photoredox catalysts are not sufficient to reduce most aryl bromides, so synthetically useful aryl radicals are often not directly available. Therefore, the development of a distinct leaving group more appropriately matched in redox potential could enable new reactivity manifolds for metallophotoredox catalysis, especially if arylcopper(iii) complexes are accessible, from which the most challenging bond-forming reactions can occur. Here we show the conceptual advantages of aryl thianthrenium salts for metallophotoredox catalysis, and their utility in site-selective late-stage aromatic fluorination.

The emergence of electrically conductive metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has led to applications in chemical sensing and electrical energy storage, among others. The most conductive MOFs are made from organic ligands and square-planar transition metal ions connected into two-dimensional (2D) sheets stacked on top of each other. Their electrical properties are thought to depend critically on the covalency of the metal–ligand bond, and less importance is given to out-of-plane charge transport. Here, we report a series of lanthanide-based MOFs that allow fine tuning of the sheet stacking. In these materials, the Ln3+ ions lie between the planes of the ligands, thus connecting organic layers into a 3D framework through lanthanide–oxygen chains. Here, efficient charge transport is found to occur primarily perpendicular to the 2D sheets. These results demonstrate that high conductivity in layered MOFs does not necessarily require a metal–ligand bond with highly covalent character, and that interactions between organic ligands alone can produce efficient charge transport pathways.

Aluminium anions with an unoccupied orbital are generally considered as highly difficult synthetic targets, as aluminium is the most electropositive element in the p block. Stabilizing effects from two nitrogen substituents and/or the coordination of a Lewis base were recently used to synthesize the first examples of anionic nucleophilic aluminium species. Here we show the synthesis and properties of a potassium salt of a non-stabilized dialkylaluminium anion that exhibits very strong basicity, which reflects the electropositive character of aluminium. An X-ray diffraction analysis revealed a monomeric structure and the shortest Al–K distance hitherto reported. The ultraviolet visible spectrum in combination with density functional theory calculations suggests an electronic structure characterized by a lone pair of electrons and an unoccupied p orbital on the aluminium centre. This species readily deprotonates benzene to form the corresponding (hydrido)(phenyl)aluminate. Reactions with other electrophiles corroborate the nucleophilicity of the aluminium centre.

DNA, when folded into nanostructures with a specific shape, is capable of spacing and arranging binding sites into a complex geometric pattern with nanometre precision. Here we demonstrate a designer DNA nanostructure that can act as a template to display multiple binding motifs with precise spatial pattern-recognition properties, and that this approach can confer exceptional sensing and potent viral inhibitory capabilities. A star-shaped DNA architecture, carrying five molecular beacon-like motifs, was constructed to display ten dengue envelope protein domain III (ED3)-targeting aptamers into a two-dimensional pattern precisely matching the spatial arrangement of ED3 clusters on the dengue (DENV) viral surface. The resulting multivalent interactions provide high DENV-binding avidity. We show that this structure is a potent viral inhibitor and that it can act as a sensor by including a fluorescent output to report binding. Our molecular-platform design strategy could be adapted to detect and combat other disease-causing pathogens by generating the requisite ligand patterns on customized DNA nanoarchitectures.

The extremely broad infrared spectrum of water in the OH stretching region is a manifestation of how profoundly a water molecule is distorted when embedded in its extended hydrogen-bonding network. Many effects contribute to this breadth in solution at room temperature, which raises the question as to what the spectrum of a single OH oscillator would be in the absence of thermal fluctuations and coupling to nearby OH groups. We report the intrinsic spectral responses of isolated OH oscillators embedded in two cold (~20 K), hydrogen-bonded water cages adopted by the Cs+·(HDO)(D2O)19 and D3O+·(HDO)(D2O)19 clusters. Most OH oscillators yield single, isolated features that occur with linewidths that increase approximately linearly with their redshifts. Oscillators near 3,400 cm−1, however, occur with a second feature, which indicates that OH stretch excitation of these molecules drives low-frequency, phonon-type motions of the cage. The excited state lifetimes inferred from the broadening are considered in the context of fluctuations in the local electric fields that are available even at low temperature.

The field of synthetic biology has used the engineered assembly of synthetic gene networks to create a wide range of functions in biological systems. To date, gene-circuit-based sensors have primarily used optical proteins (for example, fluorescent, colorimetric) as reporter outputs, which has limited the potential to measure multiple distinct signals. Here we present an electrochemical interface that permits expanded multiplexed reporting for cell-free gene-circuit-based sensors. We have engineered a scalable system of reporter enzymes that cleave specific DNA sequences in solution, which results in an electrochemical signal when these newly liberated strands are captured at the surface of a nanostructured microelectrode. We describe the development of this interface and show its utility using a ligand-inducible gene circuit and toehold switch-based sensors by demonstrating the detection of multiple antibiotic resistance genes in parallel. This technology has the potential to expand the field of synthetic biology by providing an interface for materials, hardware and software.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.