Catalysis

University of California scientist Enrique Iglesia wins prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Prize

June 14, 2023
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Professor Enrique Iglesia win Royal Society of Chemistry prize

Enrique Iglesia, Theodore Vermeulen Chair in Chemical Engineering emeritus and Professor of the Graduate...

UC Berkeley scientists collaborate with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany on catalyst digital design program

May 31, 2023
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Illustration of chemistry created by AI

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, has today announced a three-year collaboration with the research group of John Hartwig at UC Berkeley and...

Dean Toste named next chair of the Chemistry Department

April 27, 2023
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release
Dean Toste

The College is pleased to announce that Dean Toste will serve as the next chair of the Department of Chemistry in the College of Chemistry, effective July 1, 2023.

Dean has been a member of the chemistry faculty since 2002, when he was appointed as an assistant professor by then-chair Judith Klinman. As a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist,...

Eastman Lecturers

The 2021 Eastman Lectures in Catalysis features speakers Professor Regina Palkovit, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen/Germany; , Professor Paul J. Dauenhauer, University of Minnesota; and Professor David W. Flaherty, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The event is being held on March 23, 2021.

How a record-breaking copper catalyst converts CO2 into liquid fuels

February 21, 2023
By Theresa Duque | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Artist’s rendering of a copper nanoparticle as it evolves during CO2 electrolysisArtist’s rendering of a copper nanoparticle as it evolves during CO2 electrolysis: Copper nanoparticles (left) combine into larger metallic copper “nanograins” (right) within seconds of the electrochemical...

At Last: Separated and Freshly Bound

July 19, 2021
Angewandte Chemie International Edition | Press Release

carbon and hydrogen on the periodic table

The carbon–hydrogen bonds in alkanes—particularly those at the ends of the molecules, where each carbon has three hydrogen atoms bound to it—are very hard to “crack” if you want to replace the hydrogen atoms with other atoms. Methane (CH4) and ethane (CH3CH3) are made up, exclusively, of such tightly bound hydrogen atoms. In the...

John Hartwig receives the Arthur C. Cope Award

January 13, 2021
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

John Hartwig

John Hartwig, Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2021 ACS Arthur C. Cope Award for the discovery, development, and mechanistic...

Upcycling: Turning plastic bags into adhesives

December 18, 2020
By Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley media relations

Large pile of plastic in a dump

While plastic bags clog the waste stream, recycling them isn’t financially attractive, since they’re usually turned into very low-value products. If polyethylene packaging could be processed into high-value products, more of them would be recycled instead of ending up in landfills. (photo: Adobe Stock)

While many cities and eight states...

Holy grails: seeking out selective C–H activation

October 1, 2020
By Jamie Durrani | Chemistry World

Demonstration of complexity of C-H targets

The sheer number of C–H bonds in the precursor to the antibiotic erythromycin shows just how tricky a task it is to target a single one. The oxidation of a single C–H bond (red) makes erythromycin six times more biologically active than its precursor 6-deoxy erythromycin A – this chemical feat...

Scientists finally crack nature’s most common chemical bond

May 26, 2020
Robert Sanders | UC Berkeley

cracking the hydrocarbon bond

The most common chemical bond in the living world — that between carbon and hydrogen — has long resisted attempts by chemists to crack it open, thwarting efforts to add new bells and whistles to old carbon-based molecules. Now, after nearly 25 years of work by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, those hydrocarbon bonds — two-thirds of all the chemical bonds in petroleum and plastics — have fully yielded.