News & Views

The strategic placement of sulfur within a nickel porphyrin complex coupled with copper facilitates efficient electrochemical CO₂ reduction to ethylene and ethanol.

Radical processes can be leveraged to impart meta selectivity in pyridine functionalization, offering a valuable approach for the late-stage functionalization of bioactive molecules.

Building space into solids is the focus of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University), Richard Robson (University of Melbourne) and Omar M. Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley) “for the development of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)”. These materials, composed of metal ions or clusters linked by organic molecules, contain permanent and tunable cavities that have transformed how chemists design in the solid state.

Confining conjugated polymers within chiral metal–organic frameworks enables direct visualization of helical order and enhances their charge transport and spin selectivity properties.

Photochemical oxygen atom migration into carbon–carbon bonds enables the efficient synthesis of ethers from alcohol motifs.

Liquid gallium is employed as a reaction medium to synthesize uniquely structured solid–liquid–solid core–shell–shell nanoparticles, enabling the fabrication of diverse metallic nanostructures with excellent electrocatalytic performance.

Electrolysis enables selective dual C–H functionalization for transforming inert polyolefin deconstruction products into dynamic recyclable networks.

Tuning the kinetics of photo-induced crosslinking between mechanically distinct polymer phases produces strong and tough hydrogels.

Photo-electrocatalysis under alternating polarity allows enantioselective redox-neutral cross-coupling through β-scission of alcohols to afford optically pure chiral α-arylated amines.

Post-synthetic modification of olefin moieties to form coumarin linkages within covalent organic frameworks enhances their stability.

Design of anomeric leaving groups with pendant H-bond acceptors results in a stereospecific chemical O-glycosylation with broad scope and applicability to automated synthesis.

Light-driven chemical reactivity enables a synthetic system to give rise to protocells with dynamic, life-like behaviour.

Crystalline 2D mechanically interlocked polymers synthesized through supramolecular templating demonstrate 47-fold stiffness enhancement upon exfoliation with preserved structural order.

Combining cathodic oxygen reduction with anodic glycerol oxidation results in simultaneous chemical synthesis and renewable electricity production.

Highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells are fabricated by introducing a molecular sieve which finely controls the 2D/3D heterointerface reactions.

A catalytic asymmetric intramolecular reaction is developed for the [5+2] cycloaddition of oxidopyrylium ylides, enabled by chiral phosphoric acid organocatalysts, providing access to bridged bicyclic scaffolds.

Single molecule chemistry leveraging scanning probe tip-based atom manipulation is used to create cyclic C6, a previously elusive carbon nanoring, shedding new light on the stability, structure and electronic properties of low-dimensional carbon allotropes.

Reconstruction of the late enzymatic steps of the yew Taxol biosynthetic pathway in yeast enables the bioproduction of Taxol.

Forming halide perovskites inside carbon nanotubes chemically protects them, enabling their application as highly efficient X-ray detectors with low dark current.

A two-dimensional metal halide perovskite with spontaneous twisted stacking is synthesized through high-throughput experimentation and counterintuitive chemical design, demonstrating the potential of this approach for regulating metal halide perovskite photophysical properties.