Author: Roberto D’Agosta is an Ikerbasque Research Professor at ETSF and the Department of Materials Physics in the Faculty of Chemistry at the UPV/EHU in San Sebastian. Francesca Baletto, senior lecturer at King’s College London, read and commented the manuscript. Every single moment, nature exploits catalysis to make or improve specific chemical reactions. Catalysts facilitate […]
Many methods can be used to synthesise non-molecular inorganic solids. Some solids can be prepared by a variety of routes but others, especially those that are not thermodynamically stable, may be much more difficult to prepare and may require special methods. Non-molecular inorganic solids can also be prepared in various forms, as fibres, films, foams […]
From nucleic acids to proteins and sugar chains, all life is made up of polymers, large molecules made up of sequences of small units called monomers. However, how these macromolecules first appeared on the surface of Earth is still controversial. It is generally assumed that, right before life started, our planet was covered in very […]
Lipinski’s “rule of five”, 1 very well known by medicinal chemists, has been defined as a set of rules, based on the number 5 -hence its name-, to evaluate the “drug-likeness” of a given molecule. The rules are: – The molecule should have no more than 5 H-bond donors and 10 H-bond acceptors (i.e. N […]
Applicability or some usefulness is the mantra of new I+D research. However, in trying to obtain results or confirm an application we often forget to check or study the conditions and methods used. One example could be the different methodologies that we can be used to define antioxidant capacity. An antioxidant is a molecule that […]
A class of materials of utmost fundamental and applied interest is that of semicrystalline polymers. Actually, all solid synthetic polymers are, in general, partly crystalline and partly amorphous. The degree of crystallinity depends on the polymer structure and on how the solid is prepared. Rapid cooling of the molten polymer favors formation of an amorphous […]
The scattering of conduction electrons in metals owing to impurities with magnetic moments is known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, who analysed the phenomenon in 1964. This scattering increases the electrical resistance and has the consequence that, in contrast to ordinary metals, the resistance reaches a minimum as the temperature is lowered and […]
Biomedicine • Chemistry • Condensed matter • DIPC Photochemistry
Metal complexes are typically regarded as catalysts that convert organic substrates into more valuable compounds; however, to date, catalytic transformations of metal complexes are practically unknown and represent a complete new way of thinking in catalysis. Their development can expand the scope of bioorthogonal chemical reactions to inorganic substances and metal-based prodrugs, fostering the creation […]
Both the depletion of fossil fuels and the environmental concerns are a powerful drive for the development of sustainable routes to commodity chemicals. Lignocellulose, comprised of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, is the ideal candidate, but its inherent complexity hampers its transformation to value-added chemicals. The group of Katalin Barta at the University of Groningen has […]
Imagine a bucket filled with hard spheres. As these spheres are free to pack together as closely as geometry allows they tend to adopt a close-packed structure, a structure in which there is least unfilled space. X-ray diffraction studies reveal that many metallic elements have close-packed structures. This simple fact explains a couple of very […]