Highlights
C&EN: Crystals defy their symmetry to discern chiral light
24 June 2025Centrosymmetric crystals have always absorbed equal amounts of left- and right-handed circularly polarized light—until now.
C&EN: Magnetic stirrers linked to issues with reproducing chemistry results
17 June 2025From the lab that found impurities on your stir bar—your flask’s placement on a stirrer plate can mess with your reaction too.
C&EN: ‘Perplexanes’ achieve mind-bending molecular topology
10 June 2025Zirconium helps to weave entangled nanocarbon cages in high yields.
C&EN: Atom-thin iodine film makes its debut
29 May 2025Iodinene is the first halogen analog of graphene and is expected to be unusually metallic.
C&EN Talented 12: Sascha Feldmann
23 May 2025Commanding charged particles and light for energy efficiency.
TESTIMONIALS
“As an editor and reporter, Mark Peplow is fast, accurate, and versatile. He covers science policy and pure research with equal passion, and his writing combines a scientist’s precision with a journalist’s verve.” Tim Appenzeller
Former Chief Magazine Editor at Nature, now News Editor at Science
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Freelance Journalist, South Africa
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Freelance Science Writer
Author Archives: Mark Peplow
C&EN: Machine learning improves beer flavor
Algorithm correlates online reviews with chemical profiles of hundreds of beers, providing a roadmap to enhance taste.
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C&EN: Scorching heat turns MOF into discerning hydrogenation catalyst
By selectively turning alkynes into alkenes, the porous material could pave the way for more efficient purification of polymer feedstocks.
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C&EN: Photochemistry unleashes a one-two radical punch for efficient ring synthesis
Iridium and nickel catalysts cooperate to install nonaromatic rings in drug molecules.
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C&EN: Water boosts light-driven coupling chemistry
A thin film of organic molecules floating on water can undergo useful photochemical reactions, without needing organic solvents or catalysts.
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C&EN: Lasers liberate hydrogen from ammonia water
Light pulses offer an alternative approach to harnessing ammonia as a carrier for green hydrogen.
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C&EN: Roll up for flexible silicon solar cells
Thin cells could wrap around corners and use less silicon without sacrificing efficiency, potentially reducing solar costs.
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C&EN: Robot assistant optimizes photochemistry
RoboChem combines flow chemistry and machine learning to improve yield of light-driven reactions.
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C&EN: Molecular shuttle thinks inside the box
Flat guest molecules zoom back and forth within iridium-based nanobox.
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Nature: Robot chemist sparks row with claim it created new materials
Researchers question whether an AI-controlled lab assistant actually made any novel substances.
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Nature: Google AI and robots join forces to build new materials
Google DeepMind tool predicts nearly 400,000 stable substances, and an autonomous system learns to make them in the lab.
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