Bonding collection

The bonding collection

Bonds connect chemists, as well as atoms. In this collection we look at how chemists are exploiting non-traditional bonds and pushing our ideas of bonding to the limit, and explore whether bonds even exist at all.

Read the collection here...

Graphene

A decade on how has the EU’s €1 billion gamble to get graphene on the market fared?

By

Project helped take 2D materials into the mainstream but there’s still a long way to go

Javier Milei

Argentina’s new populist president has the country’s scientists worried

By

Researchers seek dialogue with new leader who plans to eliminate the nation’s science ministry and possibly its research council

Curiosity Surveys "Teal Ridge"

The perchlorate Martian mystery

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Rachel Brazil looks at how the compounds might have formed on our neighbouring planet and whether they could be useful for future exploration

News

Switzerland and EU flags

Negotiations on Switzerland rejoining Horizon Europe to begin

2023-11-24T09:30:00+00:00

Talks come after 18 months of diplomacy over the future of Switzerland’s relationship with the EU

Artificial meat

Italy bans cultivated meat products

2023-11-23T10:54:00+00:00

New law prohibits the production or sale of cultivated meat in Italy, with fines of up to €60,000

AI-powered autonomous lab

Future House wants to build an AI biologist. They’re looking to a chemistry LLM for inspiration

2023-11-22T15:03:00+00:00

ChemCrow has already recorded success researching, designing and producing an insecticide on its own

Crispr

UK becomes first country in the world to authorise a Crispr-based gene therapy

2023-11-17T10:21:00+00:00

Treatment aims to cure patients with β-thalassaemia and sickle-cell disease

Fishermen protest

Fisheries agency concludes it’s ‘very unlikely’ pyridine behind UK crustacean deaths after new tests

2023-11-16T14:30:00+00:00

Cause of mass die-offs in late 2021 and early 2022 still a mystery

Research

Liquid droplets

‘Most slippery surface ever’ inspired by new understanding of surface roughness

2023-11-23T15:58:00+00:00

Modelling and measurements reveal surprising ways slipperiness develops

Image taken from video showing magnet levitating

Case closed on mystery of why a spinning magnet can levitate other magnets

2023-11-22T10:11:00+00:00

 Phenomenon discovered in 2021 that left physicists scratching their heads unravelled  

Structure

All-metal fullerene cluster made for first time

2023-11-21T14:30:00+00:00

Dodecahedral structure offers new insight into metal bonding

Microplasma jets

DNA-damaging device could make mutant discovery safer and simpler

2023-11-21T09:30:00+00:00

Cool microplasma jets create a stream of radicals that induce mutations

Yeast

Synthetic yeast genome project creates strain with over 50% synthetic DNA

2023-11-15T14:50:00+00:00

Entirely artificial organism opens up door to designer yeast with biotechnology applications

Voice of the Royal Society of Chemistry

megaphone index

Myth busting: Chemists, the public and the media

Voice of

Close up of vials and beakers on a lab table with microscopes on each side

Innovating for the future of sustainable labs

Voice of

Landscape format photo of people with their arms around each other, viewed from behind

Addressing anxiety – Building a better chemistry culture

Voice of

Anju-Massey-Brooker-PLFs-2

The roadmap to a sustainable future for polymers

Voice of , by

  • Myth busting: Chemists, the public and the media

  • Innovating for the future of sustainable labs

  • Addressing anxiety – Building a better chemistry culture

  • The roadmap to a sustainable future for polymers

Features

Bonds under pressure

When a bond gets too extreme

By

Chemical bonds are part of the way chemists rationalise the behaviour of atoms in the conditions of the world around them. Tim Wogan looks at how they are affected when those conditions change

Weak bonding

Reaching into the non-covalent toolbox

By

Alongside supramolecular stalwarts, budding bonding forms are vying to be valuable, finds Andy Extance

Mechanical bonding

The mechanical side of bonding

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Synthetic chemists are finally mastering the assembly of interlocked molecules held together by the mechanical bond, find James Mitchell Crow

Iron blade

The archaeologists saving Africa’s ironworking heritage

By

The fires of traditional African iron smelters burned out a century ago and now the researchers dedicated to uncovering their stories are disappearing from the continent too, writes Hayley Bennett

Upcoming webinars

Overloaded book by Ginny Smith

Overloaded with author Ginny Smith

  • Overloaded with author Ginny Smith