{"title":"Catalytic Asymmetric Synthesis of Indole-based Atropisomers Bearing Silicon-Stereogenic Center","authors":"Si-Yi Liu, Zi-Qi Zhu, Fei-Xiao Chen, Ni-Na Feng, Shaofei Ni, Feng Shi","doi":"10.1039/d5sc05320j","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc05320j","url":null,"abstract":"The first diastereo- and enantioselective synthesis of indole-based atropisomers bearing Si-stereogenic center has been established via the strategy of catalytic asymmetric reductive silylation. By this strategy, a wide scope of indole-based atropisomers bearing Si-stereogenic center were synthesized in moderate to good yields with overall excellent enantioselectivities and good diastereoselectivities (up to 87% yield, 94% ee, 7.3:1 dr). This work not only provides a new strategy for catalytic asymmetric synthesizing atropisomers bearing Si-stereogenic centers, but also has realized the first catalytic asymmetric synthesis of indole-based atropisomers with a Si-stereogenic center, which will add an important member to the family of indole-based atropisomers bearing multiple chiral elements. Moreover, this work also represents the first catalytic asymmetric reductive silylation of indole scaffolds, which adds new contents to enantioselective C-Si bond formation.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"123 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Federica Fina, Caterina Bellatreccia, Xia Wu, Pier Giorgio Cozzi, Alessandro Troisi, Sergei Vinogradov, Paola Ceroni
{"title":"Reactivity of organic photocatalysts displaying thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF): rationalizing unexpected differences between rates of quenching of the lowest singlet and triplet states","authors":"Federica Fina, Caterina Bellatreccia, Xia Wu, Pier Giorgio Cozzi, Alessandro Troisi, Sergei Vinogradov, Paola Ceroni","doi":"10.1039/d5sc04948b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc04948b","url":null,"abstract":"Cyanoarene chromophores exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) are increasingly used in photoredox catalysis. At high concentrations of organic substrates, which are typically employed in preparative synthesis, the primary photoinduced electron transfer (PeT) steps in the photocatalytic processes can involve both singlet (S<small><sub>1</sub></small>) and triplet (T<small><sub>1</sub></small>) excited states of TADF chromophores, despite very short lifetimes (nanoseconds) of the former. However, the difference between the reactivities of these states is not well understood, while being critically important for the photocatalytic process. In this work, three representative TADF chromophores were examined in reductive and oxidative PeT quenching reactions. First, using kinetic simulations, we assert that Stern–Volmer quenching plots based on the experimentally measured prompt and delayed fluorescence lifetimes, but not integrated intensities, yield accurate bimolecular rate constants for the PeT quenching reactions involving S<small><sub>1</sub></small> and T<small><sub>1</sub></small> excited states. Secondly, experimental measurements of prompt and delayed fluorescence reveal significantly higher quenching constants for reductive quenching of S<small><sub>1</sub></small> compared to T<small><sub>1</sub></small> states, while for oxidative quenching the rate constants are nearly equal. Electronic structure calculations provide insight into the difference between the PeT rates for reductive quenching, suggesting that it might stem from the different spatial hole–electron distributions in S<small><sub>1</sub></small> and T<small><sub>1</sub></small> states. Taken together, our findings bring crucial information about the photocatalytic process involving TADF chromophores that should aid the design of the next-generation of TADF photocatalysts.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spontaneous deposition of boron oxide on rhodium nanostructure for selective conversion of syngas to ethanol","authors":"Jiale Xiao, Cao Wang, Haotian Meng, Chengtao Wang, Hangjie Li, Yu-Xiao Cheng, Ni Yi, Wentao Yuan, Wei Zhou, Liang Cao, Liang Wang, Fengshou Xiao","doi":"10.1039/d5sc06161j","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc06161j","url":null,"abstract":"Selectively blocking the specific sites on catalyst nanostructure for undesired side reactions are important, but challengeable. Herein, we showed that the boron oxide species could spontaneously and selectively reacted with the low-coordination sites on Rh nanoparticles, which are active for undesired methanation in conversion of syngas to ethanol. As a result, the boron oxide modified RhMn nanoparticles on silica support (RhMnB<small><sub>3.9</sub></small>/SiO<small><sub>2</sub></small>) exhibited oxygenate selectivity as high as 63.9% by suppressing the methane selectivity to 31.1%, where 90.1% of the oxygenates are C<small><sub>2</sub></small>-oxygenates. Such an oxygenate selectivity outperforms the supported RhMn catalysts that usually gave selectivity higher than 50% to undesired methane. This work offers an alternative route for ethanol production from syngas.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"197 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sindy Julieth Rodríguez, Julián Santoyo-Flores, Katarzyna Młodzikowska-Pieńko, Renana Gershoni-Poranne, Sebastian Kozuch
{"title":"Aromaticity Switching by Quantum Tunnelling","authors":"Sindy Julieth Rodríguez, Julián Santoyo-Flores, Katarzyna Młodzikowska-Pieńko, Renana Gershoni-Poranne, Sebastian Kozuch","doi":"10.1039/d5sc05717e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc05717e","url":null,"abstract":"Antiaromatic π-conjugated systems provide a powerful framework for understanding ultrafast molecular rearrangements driven by quantum tunnelling over their degenerate double-well potential surfaces. Here, we explore with computational tools the π-bond-shifting automerization in the antiaromatic Dinaphtho[2,1-a:1,2-f]pentalene (<strong>1</strong>), Dinaphtho[1,2-a:2,1f]pentalene (<strong>2</strong>), and a series of substituted derivatives. These molecules exhibit a distinctive feature: local aromatic and antiaromatic rings can interconvert their aromaticity character even close to the absolute zero via unusually fast carbon tunnelling. If these systems can be prepared in a coherent regime, the quantum superposition between the original states would delocalise their nuclear wavefunctions in a state that we describe as a \"Schrödinger's aromaticity cat.\"","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jia Chen, Xueqian Wang, Mengrui Zhang, Xue Wang, Ran Wang, Xinxing Lyu, Yunjian Xu, Xintian Shao, Luling Wu, Tony D. James
{"title":"Switchable supramolecular polycationic assemblies for tunable antibacterial strategies against antibiotic resistance","authors":"Jia Chen, Xueqian Wang, Mengrui Zhang, Xue Wang, Ran Wang, Xinxing Lyu, Yunjian Xu, Xintian Shao, Luling Wu, Tony D. James","doi":"10.1039/d5sc05035a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc05035a","url":null,"abstract":"Bacterial resistance significantly hampers the efficacy of antibiotics in eradicating pathogens and treating infections. Here, we introduce an Adaptive Cationic Therapeutic Integrated (ACTI) system, a design strategy integrating pyridinium cationic membrane disruption and tunable antibacterial activity to address this challenge. ACTI leverages the assembled hyper-enriched cationic domains to enhance the destruction of bacterial membranes, while also enabling the on-demand deactivation of antibacterial activity through disassembly, thereby safeguarding biocompatibility. Additionally, ACTI facilitates the photodynamic inactivation of negatively charged photosensitizers (TPPS) by promoting the interaction between the photosensitizer and bacteria as well as aiding the transport of singlet oxygen. ACTI-loaded photosensitizers (TPPS@ACTI) exhibited potent antibacterial activity (>99% pathogen elimination) against methicillin-resistant <em>S. aureus</em> (MRSA) and <em>E. coli in vitro</em>, and the antibacterial efficacy was further validated using an MRSA-infected murine wound model. ACTI establishes a paradigm shift for the design of tunable antimicrobials that balance potency and biosafety in complex biological environments.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mike Jörges, Daniel Knyszek, Manoj Kumar, Varre S Swamy, Viktoria H. Gessner
{"title":"Isolation of a Lewis acid-base stabilized stannanone","authors":"Mike Jörges, Daniel Knyszek, Manoj Kumar, Varre S Swamy, Viktoria H. Gessner","doi":"10.1039/d5sc06549f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc06549f","url":null,"abstract":"A diylide-substituted stannanone, stabilized by the Lewis acid SnCl 2 (formally written as Y 2 Sn=O→SnCl 2 ) has been successfully isolated and characterized by spectroscopic, crystallographic and computational methods. The nature of the ylide substituent proved critical for its successful isolation. While oxidation of a stannylene with a cyano-substituted ylide yielded only a dimeric stannoxane, incorporation of a thiophosphinoyl moiety provided sufficient steric bulk and additional stabilization through P=S coordination, enabling the isolation of the monomeric stannanone. Computational studies revealed a strongly polarized Sn-O bond with negligible π-contribution to the bonding interaction and high opposing charges, resulting in a short Sn-O linkage but a high reactivity toward bond cleavage. This study highlights the challenge associated with stabilizing formal multiple bonds with the heavier atoms and underscores the importance of substituent design in achieving such stabilization.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Priyanka Lahiri, Swati Priyadarshini, Mahak Saini, Muskan Agrawal, Sk Abdul Mohid, Raju S Rajmani, Vishnu S Ammineni, Pritam Biswas, Aparna Asok, Amit K Baidya, Anirban Bhunia, Govardhan Reddy, Ranjana Pathania, Jayanta Chatterjee
{"title":"Turn-engineering tunes the conformational rigidity of β-hairpin AMPs in achieving membrane selectivity and killing drug-resistant ESKAPE pathogens","authors":"Priyanka Lahiri, Swati Priyadarshini, Mahak Saini, Muskan Agrawal, Sk Abdul Mohid, Raju S Rajmani, Vishnu S Ammineni, Pritam Biswas, Aparna Asok, Amit K Baidya, Anirban Bhunia, Govardhan Reddy, Ranjana Pathania, Jayanta Chatterjee","doi":"10.1039/d5sc06810j","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc06810j","url":null,"abstract":"Naturally occurring β-hairpin antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) exhibit potent membranolytic activity against bacterial and mammalian cells, limiting their therapeutic development due to the lack of selectivity. This study demonstrates that the reverse turn in these AMPs can be used to dictate their molecular rigidity, which drives their membranolytic action. By fine tuning the rigidity at the reverse turn by incorporating a moderately rigid β-II' turn-inducing motif through N-methylation of the amide bond, we achieved selectivity in targeting the bacterial membrane over human red blood cells. The selectivity results from the hairpin-nucleation efficiency of the engineered β-turn within these linear AMPs devoid of disulfide bridges and their interaction with the neutral mammalian and negatively charged bacterial membrane. Such fine-tuning of the structure at the β-turn, allowed us to develop molecules derived from naturally occurring toxic AMPs, which displayed selective killing of drug-resistant bacterial pathogens over mammalian cells with in vivo efficacy.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lukas Naimovicius, Manvydas Dapkevičius, Edvinas Radiunas, Mila Miroshnichenko, Gediminas Kreiza, Carles Alcaide, Paulius Baronas, Yoichi Sasaki, Nobuhiro Yanai, Nobuo Kimizuka, Andrew Brian Pun, Miquel Solà, Pankaj Bharmoria, Karolis Kazlauskas, Kasper Moth-Poulsen
{"title":"Enhancing the Statistical Probability Factor in Triplet-Triplet Annihiltaion Photon Upconversion via TIPS Functionalization","authors":"Lukas Naimovicius, Manvydas Dapkevičius, Edvinas Radiunas, Mila Miroshnichenko, Gediminas Kreiza, Carles Alcaide, Paulius Baronas, Yoichi Sasaki, Nobuhiro Yanai, Nobuo Kimizuka, Andrew Brian Pun, Miquel Solà, Pankaj Bharmoria, Karolis Kazlauskas, Kasper Moth-Poulsen","doi":"10.1039/d5sc05248c","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc05248c","url":null,"abstract":"We investigated the influence of triisopropylsilyl (TIPS) functionalization on annihilators in triplet-triplet annihilation photon upconversion, specifically focusing on their spin statistical probability factor. A new green-emitting annihilator 3,9-bis((triisopropylsilyl)ethynyl)perylene (TIPS-PY) displaying a record red-to-green TTA-UC quantum yield of 13.7% (50% theoretical maximum) is synthesized. This remarkable efficiency was achieved due to the following features of the TIPS functionalization of PY: 1) retaining a high fluorescence quantum yield of 95%, 2) reduced triplet energy to 1.29 eV enabling efficient triplet energy transfer (~100%) from the sensitizer, PdTPBP (T1= 1.55 eV), and 3) a high efficiency of singlet generation after triplet coupling, indicated by the statistical probability factor, f = 39.2% ± 2.4%. Notably, the f value of TIPS-PY surpasses other annihilators in the 470-570 nm emission range. Excited state computational analysis using TheoDORE, revealed a higher percentage of charge transfer character in S0S1 in TIPS-PY compared to PY, indicative of higher singlet-like character in their triplet-pair state 1(T1T1), which can enhance the coupling of the triplet-pair state with the excited singlet-state, thereby increasing the efficiency of singlet generation, a phenomenon undisclosed before. Furthermore, the suitable T1 of TIPS-PY enables upconversion of 730 nm light when sensitized with Os(m-peptpy)2(TFSI)2 (T1 = 1.63 eV), demonstrating the broad upconversion range of TIPS-PY in the phototherapeutic window desired for biological applications.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards Large-scale Chemical Reaction Image Parsing via a Multimodal Large Language Model","authors":"Yufan Chen, Ching Ting Leung, Jianwei Sun, Yong Huang, Linyan Li, Hao Chen, Hanyu Gao","doi":"10.1039/d5sc04173b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc04173b","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated significant promise in advancing organic chemistry research; however, its effectiveness depends on the availability of high-quality chemical reaction data. Currently, most published chemical reactions are not available in machine-readable form, limiting the broader application of AI in this field. The extraction of published chemical reactions into structured databases still relies heavily on manual curation, and robust automatic parsing of chemical reaction images into machine-readable data remains a significant challenge. To address this, we introduce the Reaction Image Multimodal large language model (RxnIM), the first multimodal large language model specifically designed to parse chemical reaction images into machine-readable reaction data. RxnIM not only extracts key chemical components from reaction images but also interprets the textual content that describes reaction conditions. Together with a specially designed large-scale dataset generation method to support model training, our approach achieves excellent performance, with an average F<small><sub>1</sub></small> score of 88% on various benchmarks, surpassing state-of-the-art methods by an average of 5%. This represents a crucial step toward the automatic construction of large databases of machine-readable reaction data parsed from images in the chemistry literature, providing essential data resources for AI research in chemistry. The source code, model checkpoints, and datasets developed in this work are released under permissive licenses.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145235485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MOF surface morphology governs interfacial pore architecture and CO₂ dynamics in mixed matrix membranes","authors":"Alejandro Diaz- Marquez, Supriyo Naskar, Dong Fan, Mohamed Eddaoudi, Guillaume Maurin","doi":"10.1039/d5sc04241k","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sc04241k","url":null,"abstract":"Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), which embed metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) within polymers, offer a promising platform for next-generation, energy-efficient separations. However, the nano-structuring of the MOF/polymer interface and its influence on the MMM performance remains poorly understood. Here, we uncover two fundamental design principles that bridge this gap enabled by an automated, graph theory enhanced molecular simulation platform. First, we demonstrate that MOF surface morphology, specifically its planarity and roughness, plays a decisive role in shaping the topology of the interfacial pore network, including its dimensionality, connectivity, and spatial organization. Second, we show that this pore topology critically governs interfacial CO₂ dynamics: highly interconnected and continuous networks facilitate efficient translational and rotational motion, whereas fragmented architectures severely limit molecular mobility. Beyond providing a deep molecular-level understanding, this work introduces a new design paradigm: deliberate tuning of MOF surface morphology emerges as a powerful strategy to control interfacial nanostructure and optimize gas dynamics. Together, these findings open an unexplored pathway for the rational design of high-performance MMMs for advancing energy-efficient separation technologies.","PeriodicalId":9909,"journal":{"name":"Chemical Science","volume":"26 7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145229058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}