Graphical abstract. Credit: Energy & Fuels (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.4c03643 UC Santa Cruz chemists have discovered a new way to produce biodiesel from waste oil that both simplifies the process and requires relatively mild heat. This discovery has the potential to make the alternative fuel source much more appealing to the massive industrial sectors that are … Read more
Chemists synthesized a highly complex natural molecule through a revolutionary strategy of functionalizing normally inert carbon-hydrogen (C-H). Science published the breakthrough led by chemists at Emory University and Caltech. The work is the most dramatic example yet of a sequence of C-H functionalization reactions selectively transforming low-cost materials into complex building blocks of organic chemistry. … Read more
UCLA chemists have found a big problem with a fundamental rule of organic chemistry that has been around for 100 years — it’s just not true. And they say: It’s time to rewrite the textbooks. Organic molecules, those made primarily of carbon, are characterized by having specific shapes and arrangements of atoms. Molecules known as … Read more
Inside view of the photoreactor setup during operation. Credit: Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq8029 A team of chemists at the University of Cambridge has developed a metal-free way to convert symmetrical diols selectively into one of two mirror-image isomers. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group took advantage of the ability of chiral … Read more