Illustration: A catalyst (center) based on iridium (blue ball) can snip a hydrogen atom (white balls) off a terminal methyl group (upper and lower left) to add a boron-oxygen compound (pink and red) that is easily swapped out for more complicated chemical groups. The reaction works on simple hydrocarbon chains (top reaction) or more complicated carbon compounds (bottom reaction)....
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 have banned single-use plastics, bags...
The catalysis innovator on the thrills of heading to the mountains and having a reaction named after him.
John Hartwig is the Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry. His research aims to find new metal-catalysed reactions, and he was one of the developers of the Buchwald-...
UCB Chemists using some of the shortest laser pulses available have now been able to resolve the step-by-step process leading to the exploding of a chemical bond, essentially making a movie of the event.
A reaction that kicks out a single nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur atom from six-membered rings using only blue light has been developed by US scientists.
The method involves breaking the C–N, C–O or C–S bond in saturated heterocycles and reclosing the ring to create smaller cyclic structures. "This avoids having to...
A team of researchers at Berkeley Lab, led by alumna Rebecca Abergel, have developed a library of artificial proteins or “peptoids” that effectively “chelate” or bind to lanthanides and actinides, heavy metals that make up the so-called f-block elements at the bottom of the periodic table. The new library offers researchers an automated, high-throughput method for precisely designing new peptoids – protein-like polymers with a precise sequence of monomer units – that chelate lanthanides such as gadolinium, a common ingredient in MRI contrast agents, and actinides such as plutonium.
by Ashley C Huff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Phys.org
A research team which include members from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, the lab of John Arnold at the University of California - Berkeley, and the University of South Florida have developed a material that selectively binds dissolved uranium with a low-cost polymer adsorbent. The results, published in Nature Communications, could help push past bottlenecks in the cost and efficiency of extracting uranium resources from oceans for sustainable energy production.
A team of researchers, including faculty from Northwestern Engineering and UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry, has expanded the understanding of how virus shells self-assemble, an important step toward developing techniques that use viruses as vehicles to deliver targeted drugs and therapeutics throughout the body.
Zinc-zinc bonds are rare in chemistry. So are linear four-metal compounds. Nevertheless, Trevor D. Lohrey, a member of John Arnold’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, has made the first molecule with a Re-Zn-Zn-Re core. Lohrey used a rhenium(I) salt to reduce ZnCl2 and make a zinc cation to which anionic rhenium compounds coordinated.
A new thorium-aluminum complex is the first in which an actinide element donates electrons when bonding with a metal.
Zinc-zinc bonds are rare in chemistry. So are linear four-metal compounds. Nevertheless, Trevor D. Lohrey, a member of John Arnold’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, has made the first molecule with a Re-Zn-Zn-Re core. Lohrey used a rhenium(I) salt to reduce ZnCl2 and make a zinc cation to which anionic rhenium compounds coordinated.