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ResearchFirst fundamentally new form of adsorption for more than 90 years driven by molecular machines
Unlike physisorption and chemisorption, the newly discovered ‘mechanisorption’ is an active process that can store energy or chemicals
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Feature
mRNA vaccines for Covid and beyond
Already hailed as a miracle, the new vaccine technology could protect us from other diseases, Clare Sansom finds
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Research
Cooking oils work as solvents for metal-catalysed reactions
Suzuki–Miyaura, Hiyama, Stille, Sonogashira and Heck cross-couplings shown to proceed with quantitative yields in certain vegetable oils, fish oil, butter and waxes
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Research
Squeezed crystal becomes better catalyst
Fine-tuning platinum’s lattice strain with removable atomic spacers boosts its catalytic activity by up to 50%
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Feature
How organocatalysis won the Nobel prize
Jamie Durrani tells the story of how two young upstarts, Ben List and David MacMillan, created a whole new field of catalysis
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Research
Uranium’s strong covalent bond breaks periodic table predictions
Actinide’s unusual covalency could explain its ability to fix nitrogen
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Research
First snapshots of ionised water’s fleeting radical–cation pair
Ultrafast electron diffraction spots hydroxyl–hydronium complex before it separates a hundred quadrillionth of a second later
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Research
Möbius metallacycles show their aromaticity with textbook reactivity
First electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions with unusual molecules
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Research
New process could turn scrap metal into hi-tech steel in demand for cars and alloys
Ultra-low carbon steel created electrochemically
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Research
Explainer: why has asymmetric organocatalysis won the chemistry Nobel prize?
In a rather unexpected move by the Nobel committee, this year’s prize in chemistry has been awarded to Benjamin List and David MacMillan
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News
Asymmetric organocatalysis scoops 2021 chemistry Nobel prize
Benjamin List and David MacMillan recognised for research that makes chemistry greener
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Research
Marie Antoinette’s secret messages to Swedish count revealed by chemical analysis
Spectroscopy deciphers censored passages in 200-year-old letters between last French queen and the man rumoured to be her lover
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Research
Record NMR shift in metal-bound phosphorus
Second record for iron complex as chemical shift beyond –10,000ppm discovered in phosphorus atoms directly bound to the metal
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Research
Peptide superstructures speed up Michael reaction
A tripeptide that self-assembles into a supramolecular fibres accelerates an asymmetric benchmark reaction by up to 74%
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Research
Ultraphosphates break decades-old anti-branching rule
Discovery of elusive branched phosphates’ unexpected stability means they could have played a role in prebiotic chemistry
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Research
First vortex beam made entirely of atoms
Twisting atoms’ quantum mechanical wave function into a helix could reveal insights into atom–matter interactions
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Research
Liquid crystals under pressure create squid-like camouflage
Pneumatic membranes trigger full-spectrum colour shifting on demand
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Research
Method to make unusual oligonucleotides could be a boon for gene therapy drugs
Synthesis can insert unusual linkages into DNA molecules while rivalling industry standard chemistry in speed and efficiency
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Business
Chemours under fire for trying to exempt fluorochemicals from EU regulation
European Court of Justice will rule on whether GenX chemicals should be listed as substances of very high concern
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Research
Giant molecular cage protects plastic-eating enzyme
Caged protein withstands temperatures much hotter than its usual melting point and becomes 1000 times more resistant to solvents
