Themed collection Chemical Communications HOT Articles 2024

Our highlight provides a comprehensive/insightful review on the achievement of combining a MOF and single atoms to generate high-performance photocatalysts for energy-related reactions.

This Highlight summarizes the recent progress of dual-stimuli responsive theranostic agents based on small molecules.

Novel NOS linkages stabilize protein tertiary and quaternary structures and may be as prevalent as disulfide bonds. They regulate enzyme activity and have other important roles.

Recent advances in the use of MXenes for (photo)electrocatalytic water splitting applications are reviewed.

Elucidating the oxygen transfer route can facilitate the development of electro-catalytic oxygenation reactions. Herein, we introduce oxygen transfer routes including the redox-mediated pathway and the direct oxygen transfer (DOT) method.

This highlight discusses the advantages of various oxidation methods for improved performance of the electrochemical oxidation of ethylene and propylene, and provides an overview of current challenges and problems requiring further efforts.

This highlight discusses state-of-the-art mechanism-based modeling and machine-learning approaches in cell-free synthetic biology and their potential for designing and optimizing novel genetic circuits.

In this review, the state-of-the-art advances in radical-involved C(sp³)–N bond formation via metallaphotoredox catalysis have been highlighted, which are organized according to different catalytic modes, reaction types, and substrate classes.

This highlight article summarizes the recent developments and challenges in photocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide and looks forward to the development direction of this field.

This review provides an electrosynthesis strategy of H₂O₂via the 2e⁻ ORR, covering aspects of reaction mechanisms, performance assessment, catalyst engineering, and setups for scaling up H₂O₂ production.

This highlight demonstrates the state of the art in the field of the enantioselective merged gold/organocatalysis by leveraging the unique reactivity of each catalyst.

Real-time monitoring of biocatalytic-based processes is significantly improved and simplified when they can be visualized.

To cope with the environmental pollution and energy shortage, reducing carbon dioxide molecules and producing fuels and chemicals via electrocatalytic methods, is one of the effective pathways to achieve carbon neutrality.

This article highlights recent advances in computational design of water splitting electrocatalysts, and emphasizes the unique insights and predictive power of computational design for improving catalyst performance.

This review focuses on the latest developments of single-chain nanoparticles bearing internal compartments (sized ∼1 nm), comparable to proteins and enzymes. We focus on the synthesis, detailed analyses and applications of such compartments.

In this feature article, we provide an overview of the photocatalytic capabilities of copper-based nanoclusters for organic bond-forming reactions.

Progress in chemical recycling of waste polyesters (waste plastic refinery) was reviewed and prospected, newly reported thermal catalysis, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, and biocatalysis in the recycle of waste PET-based product were introduced.

The ability of hydrogenase enzymes to activate H₂ with excellent selectivity leads to many interesting possibilities for biotechnology driven by H₂ as a clean reductant.

This review summarizes recent major advances in iron-catalysed C–H aminations of alkyl azides through iron–alkylnitrene/alkylimido intermediates to access various N-heterocycles.

This review summarizes recent advancements in the study of multiphase coacervates, focusing on design strategies, underlying mechanisms, structural control, and their applications in biomimetics.

Many photocatalysts were initially developed or used as emitters for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Requirements for photocatalysts and OLED emitters overlap in many aspects but diverge in some.

In this review, we account for the definition, delimitation, and categorization of self-organized total synthesis and then elucidate a comprehensive understanding of this synthetic strategy based on our intensive explorations.

This feature article describes strategies for constructing supramolecular aggregates of (semi)synthetic dyes, particularly chlorophyll derivatives to mimic the photosynthetic light-harvesting antennas.

This feature article comprehensively summarizes the recent advances in catalytic enantioselective construction of monofluoromethyl-substituted stereocenters.

This review outlines methods and strategies to exploit specific azide positions for molecular conjugation in the presence of multiple azido groups. Illustrative examples spanning di-, tri- and tetraazide click scaffolds are included.

Over the last several decades, saturated polycyclic cage compounds have remained a point of interest for organic chemists because of their unique characteristics and reactivity.

Chemiluminescent luminophores, coreactants, catalysts and sonochemiluminescence devices are highlighted.

The recent progress in the design of metal-free small-molecule derived piezoelectric materials and their utilization as all-organic piezoelectric energy harvesters has been discussed in this feature article.

The electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction to ammonia (eNO₃⁻RR) is a potential way for harmonizing the nitrogen cycle. This feature article summarizes the recent advances in electrocatalyst design for the eNO₃⁻RR from a theoretical perspective.

Recent advancements in methane hydroxylation catalysis have achieved nearly total selectivity. A deeper understanding of catalyst design, reaction mechanism, and parameter optimization is crucial for minimizing CO₂ and boosting oxygenate yield.

This comprehensive Feature Article summarizes the recent progress of supramolecular light-harvesting systems utilizing tetraphenylethylene (TPE) chromophores as antennas.

Incorporation of cationic ligands within pincer frameworks allowed to develop them from obscure peculiarities into a diverse class of ancillary ligands.

This feature article elucidates the development and notable progress of glycosyl sulfoxide-based glycosylation reactions, with a specific emphasis on cases where sulfinyl groups are situated either directly at the anomeric position or more distally.

The possible modes have been summarized to disclose the reductive elimination from Ni(II) species.

A series of borylated polyenes is synthesised by cross-dimerisation as a synthetic building block for cross-coupling reactions.

This review overviews recent research on circularly polarized luminescence from planar chiral organic compounds, focusing on their synthetic strategies, properties and applications.

This manuscript summarized the recent progress of MOF-based pyroptosis inducers in immunotherapy.

There are various interactions that either partially fit or do not fit the currently accepted definitions of the hydrogen bond.

New discoveries on polymer and polyelectrolyte brush systems and the corresponding brush-supported ions and water, arising from employing all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, have been thoroughly reviewed.

We highlighted the recent research progress concerning the molecule engineering strategy of toll-like receptor 7/8 agonists for enhancing immunotherapy, including our research work and some related emerging works.

Recent advances in the development of cascade ring expansion reactions for the synthesis of medium-sized rings and macrocycles are described.

Through the magnifying glass of a suitable computational protocol, both support and guidance of experimental advances in small molecules activation mediated by apolar and weakly polar bonds are made possible.

In this review, we provide the very first comprehensive exposition of artificial potassium transporters developed mostly over the past ten years.

Cucurbit[n]uril functionalized gold nanoparticles and electrodes facilitate the development of sensing platforms based on recognition tunneling, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, single molecule force spectroscopy, and electrochemical methods.

Sample transformation can be used to provide insights into the properties of complex samples.

A modular nickel-catalyzed silylation of aryl thianthrenium salts with salt-stabilized silylzinc pivalates is disclosed, thus providing an expedient route to rapidly incorporate silyl motifs into aromatics.

Understanding the competitive nature of insertion versus interphase formation is key to the design of insertion electrodes of fluoride-ion batteries.

Cereblon-recruiting PROTACs can degrade HDAC1 with selectivity over HDAC3.

A dicationic double-twisted nanographene exhibited an intense NIR-II absorption band tailing to 1500 nm as well as a high dissymmetry factor of −2.09% at 1443 nm.

Tetranuclear palladium and nickel–sulfur clusters were synthesized using a diamidocarbene-derived, redox-active carbon disulfide ligand.

A hydrazone-linked COF (DvDf-C3XJ-COF) with hydrogen-bond reinforcement and abundant coordination sites was synthesized, exhibiting strong fluorescence and high sensitivity/selectivity for Hg²⁺ detection, with a detection limit of 1.65 × 10⁻⁶ M.

A MOF-packed column can detect a pinpoint difference in a polymer chain through a nanopore-threading recognition mechanism.

Here we reported a supramolecular sequestration strategy to overcome the post-treatment phototoxicity of photofrin via direct host–guest complexation.

We successfully synthesized Li₂NbHO₂, the first example of a rock-salt-type transition-metal oxyhydride. Galvanostatic charge/discharge tests revealed that Li₂NbHO₂ functions as an electrode for lithium secondary batteries.

We develop a novel membrane electrolyte comprising h-BN-doped PEO modified PVDF-HFP-nanofibers with high ionic conductivity (3.3 × 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹) and Li⁺ transference number (0.74), endowing solid LiFePO₄//Li batteries with excellent cyclability.

A poly(ionic liquid) (PIL) probe material that is rich in I₂ interaction sites was developed, and a green and pollution-free electrochemical method was used to detect gaseous I₂ using PIL-based film sensors.

Room-temperature atmospheric-pressure ALD enables the deposition of highly dispersed Pt sub-nanometer clusters on a gram-scale quantity of TiO₂ nanopowder.

We report low-valent iron complexes containing bis-NHC and bis-phosphine donor ligands that coordinate and strongly activate N₂ and CO.

A carbonylative γ-C(sp³)–H functionalization of alcohols via migration of heteroaryl groups to produce 1,4-diketones has been developed.

Blue photoluminescence (PL) was observed in polystyrene sulfonic acid solution (PSS) for the first time. And the diversity and tunability of its PL properties were revealed.

A simple cobalt-catalytic aerobic approach for the direct dithiolation of unactivated alkenes with thiols has been established, enabling efficient access to symmetric and unsymmetric vicinal dithioethers under mild reaction conditions.

The reversible insertion of carbon dioxide into the silicon–nitrogen bond of an N-heterocyclic iminosilane is reported.

Structurally-dense and stereochemically-defined tricyclic heterocycles are easily accessed by (3+3) cycloaddition, leading to versatile Csp³-rich scaffolds.

The work demonstrates the successful merger of electrochemistry with asymmetric iminium ion organocatalysis.

We developed a method for the copper-catalyzed coupling of propargyl gem-dichlorides with (DMPU)₂Zn(R_f)₂ to assemble chloro-substituted fluoroalkylated allenes. The reaction proceeds under mild conditions with good functional group tolerance.

Quinolones from P. aeruginosa inhibit the twitching motility of A. nosocomialis without interfering with its growth. This finding suggests an intriguing quinolone-based mechanism that enables P. aeruginosa to limit encroachment of other microbes.