Category: 6. Chemistry

Although starting your own company is often presented as ‘going it alone’, most successful entrepreneurs have an extensive support network behind them. Usually more than one. You need the support of your cofounders and early employees,…

Stable isotope analysis could offer a new tool in the fight against wildlife poaching by helping differentiate legal mammoth ivory from illegal elephant ivory. The method is faster and cheaper than existing techniques and could help authorities…

The stability of the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide can be dramatically improved simply by adding a small amount of acid. This addresses a key stumbling block in the commercialisation of the reaction by dissolving the salts that…

When Clare Mahon went to do her laundry one August day in 2022, she didn’t know it would lead her to uncover a colourful reaction between two common consumer products.¹

‘I had a white T-shirt that had a sort of greasy-looking stain on it, and…

The N’-(2-cyanoacetyl)isonicotinohydrazide (H₂L) elemental analyses indicated that it had C₉H₈N₄O₂ formula, whereas its complexes were 1:1 (M: L) stoichiometry and were soluble only in DMF and DMSO. The complexes were non-electrolytic, where…

We’ve marked two important anniversaries in Chemistry World recently: 200 years since Michael Faraday first isolated benzene and 100 years since Cecilia Payne made her discovery that our sun is a ball of incandescent hydrogen and helium. These…

Any reaction that takes place in solution requires stirring. From undergraduate experiments to high-end cutting-edge syntheses, stirring ensures that reagents mix and react under controlled conditions. Magnetic stirrers – ubiquitous…

Varying the position of a reaction vessel on a magnetic stirrer can significantly change the outcome of a chemical reaction. That’s the conclusion of scientists working with Valentine Ananikov from the Russian Academy of Sciences, who made this…

Researchers in the US have looked to biology to develop an anionic organic photocatalyst that can reduce arenes with visible light at room temperature. This super-reducing catalyst makes such reactions safer, cuts reaction times and could be…

In November 2023, Pfizer announced plans to discontinue its pharmaceutical sciences small molecule capabilities at its Discovery Park location in Sandwich, UK, to consolidate the facilities at two sites in the US and India. This decision, which…