Complete Unidirectionality in a Chemically Activated Motor

Chemically activated molecular motors that can undergo a full 360° rotation are rare. Designing such an artificial motor while preserving full directional fidelity is even more challenging. In this issue of Chem, Feringa and co-workers demonstrate that this feat can be accomplished through careful molecular design that takes advantage of point and helical...

2w

Small Molecules Modulating Mammalian Biological Clocks: Exciting New Opportunities for Synthetic Chemistry

The circadian clock is an intrinsic time-keeping system that controls daily rhythms in almost all living organisms on the earth. Controlling the circadian clock in a precise manner will make significant contributions in the elucidation of their molecular mechanisms, as well as to medicine and agriculture. Small molecules will provide unique opportunities...

2w

In This Issue

In This Issue highlights the most exciting articles of the current issue with short editorial pieces written by the corresponding handling editors.

2w

Chemically Powered Synthetic “Living” Systems

Synthetic chemically powered active matter aims to reproduce the salient features of out-of-equilibrium living systems. Despite significant progress, the current synthetic systems do not yet reach the autonomy and sophistication of their biological counterparts. Future challenges include designing memory and evolution into active systems and engineering...

2w

Hydrazones as New Molecular Tools

The development of chemically and light-activated hydrazone switches expands the toolbox available to practitioners and introduces a systems chemistry approach to the field of molecular switches and machines. This perspective summarizes the unique properties that hydrazone switches bring forth and highlights how these new features facilitate the design...

2w

Reducing Voltage Losses in the A-DA′D-A Acceptor-Based Organic Solar Cells

The recent A-DA′D-A non-fullerene acceptors have attracted widespread attention because of their electron-deficient-core-based central fused ring. With the synergistic effect of electron-deficient-core and molecular geometry, the A-DA′D-A molecules could achieve low voltage losses and high current generation at the same time, reaching new regimes of...

2w

Digital Reticular Chemistry

Reticular chemistry operates in an infinite chemical space. Although great progress has been made, there remains a gap between the possibilities foreseeable and the capacity of discovery limited by current tools and methods. The perspective highlights that establishing digital reticular chemistry by applying digital tools, specifically laboratory robotics...

2w

Selective B(C6F5)3-Catalyzed Reactions of α-Diazoesters with Heterocycles and Alkenes

The development of protocols catalyzed by main group element compounds is desirable to substitute rare and toxic transition metal catalysts. In this issue of Chem, Melen and co-workers employ B(C6F5) as a catalyst for the reaction of α-aryl-α-diazoesters with different heterocycles giving high selectivities and yields in a variety of transformations.

2w

Chemiluminescent Nanosystems for Imaging Cancer Chemodynamic Therapy

In this issue of Chem, Song and co-workers report a novel chemodynamic and chemiluminescent system. This system exhibited the acid-stimulated chemiluminescent emission and singlet oxygen generation. Meanwhile, the yield of singlet oxygen could be real-time monitored by the ratiometric chemiluminescence and fluorescence imaging to guide cancer chemodynamic...

2w

A Chemically Driven Rotary Molecular Motor Based on Reversible Lactone Formation with Perfect Unidirectionality

A chemically driven molecular motor has been designed, which proceeds through stepwise movements fueled by chemical energy and undergoes full 360° unidirectional rotation. A record, nearly 100% unidirectionality is realized during the whole rotary process.

2w