Chemical Communications Blog

A collaboration of Finnish and Russian scientists has resulted in the creation of a gold-diphosphine helical cage that plays host to small organic molecules, like dichloromethane and carbon disulphide. Igor Koshevoy and colleagues from the University of Eastern Finland, and Sergey Tunikv and co-workers from St. Petersburg State University have shown that the assembly of these cages occur via an unprecedented transformation.

Why not discover what is so unprecedented about the transformation process and download the article today? The authors have published their results in ChemComm, which will be free to access until the 9th December.

Organic conjugated poymer networks are found to be promising candidates for photocatalytic water splitting, say scientists in Germany.

Klaus Müllen and colleagues from the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, report a straightforward synthesis that leads to fully organic photocatalysts showing enhanced long-time stability.

Would you like to read more? Then why not download the article today, which has been published in ChemComm and will be free to acess until the 9th December.

Cellulose nanocrystals can be transformed into pH sensing nanoparticles by dual fluorescent labelling employing a one-pot procedure, explain scientists in the UK and Denmark.

In particular, Wim Thielemans, Jonathan Aylott and co-workers from the University of Nottingham alongside colleagues from the University of Southern Denmark, have shown that the thiol–ene click reaction can be used to modify the cellulose nanocrystals surface, leading to many future applications in sensing or tissue engineering.

Fancy finding out more? Download the article today and blog some comments on the science below. The communication has been published in ChemComm where it will be free to access until the 9th December.

Japanese scientists claim to be breaking new ground by making optimal use of limited noble metal resources with one of the most abundant, renewable bioresources – cellulose.

They made gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were made using crystalline cellulose single nanofibres (CSNFs), tailored from native cellulose. The AuNPs@CSNFs composite showed excellent catalytic efficiency, with a turnover efficiency of 840 times more than conventional polymer-supported AuNPs.

Takuya Kitaoka from Kyushu University and colleagues from the University of Tokyo, have published their findings in ChemComm, which is free to access until the 3rd December. So why not download the article today and blog some feedback below?

An intrinsically conducting polymer (ICP)-organised nanopore array can be formed by controlled
electropolymerisation of pyrrole from an ionic-surfactant-solution in a titanium dioxide nanotubular matrix. 

Damian Kowalski and Patrik Schmuki from the University of Erlangen–Nurnberg, in Germany, have shown that the polymerisation is initialised selectively in the space between nanotube walls, forming a mechanically stable polymer network where wall thicknesses can also be controlled. Such robust polymer nanostructures are very promising for application in electrochemical systems.

Would you like to know more on the methodology and reaction conditions used by the team? Then why not download the article today, which is free to access until the 22nd November. Why not blog some comments on this article below too?

Low-spin nitrato iron complexes were formed by sequential reactions of oxygen and ammonia with thin layers of an iron porphyrin complex at low temperatures (80–100 K). Tigran Kurtikyan from the National Academy of Sciences in Armenia and Peter Ford from the University of California in the US, believe that the kinetic barrier for such isomerisations must be quite low, regardless of the reaction mechanism used.

Fancy studying the IR and visible spectra obtained to support these conclusions? Why not download the article today, which is free to access until the 22nd of November and blog some comments below.