Themed collection Viewpoints

Since James and Young's seminal report on the kinetic resolution of 4-pentenals by hydroacylation, enantioselective methods have progressed to include 4-pentenal cyclisations, medium-ring syntheses, and intermolecular variants.

I discuss here the contribution from J. S. Miller and co-workers concerning the discovery of ferromagnetism in an organometallic compound.

In this Viewpoint, the impact of the paper published by Gautam R. Desiraju and Angelo Gavezzotti (J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1989, 621) upon the development of Crystal Engineering, now recognised a key discipline in contemporary chemical/pharmaceutical/materials science, is discussed.

Publication of the correct structure for ascidiacyclamide, a symmetrical patellamide, led to studies on the application and origins of these ribosomally produced compounds.

This viewpoint will discuss the impact of the 2000 Chem. Commun. report that the palladium-catalysed Suzuki coupling can be performed quickly and easily in a room-temperature ionic liquid.

In 1976, Baldwin suggested the favorable modes of ring closure. These guidelines have become the common starting point in the design of new cyclization reactions and catalyzed the development of modern stereoelectronic concepts.

The results from a final-year undergraduate project led to an $876M sale of a spin-out company 19 years later: the 1977 communication from Mark Eddowes and Allen Hill seeded the rich field of protein electrochemistry, the technology that underpins commercial glucose biosensors.

The first explanation of spin-crossover in iron(II) complexes was published in Chem. Commun. in 1966. This has led to nearly 50 years of research in coordination chemistry, crystal engineering, solid state chemistry and physics, and nanoscience.

Sir Robert Robinson's landmark total synthesis of tropinone is discussed.

The hydrosilylation/Grignard sequence reported 20 years ago is still the most widely used method for the synthesis of carbosilane dendrimers.

The “guidelines for radical reactions”, first articulated by Beckwith in 1980, transformed the free radical landscape and represents a major contribution to chemistry from the past thirty years.

This Viewpoint turns back the clock to 1998 when a contribution by Carlucci, Ciani, Macchi and Proserpio (Chem. Commun., 1998, 1837-–1838) addressed the existence of multiple properties in coordination polymer networks and the use of topology for classifying network connectivity, thereby serving as a presage of the exponential growth in the field of coordination polymers that continues unabated to this day.

The landmark 1954 paper by Craig et al. exploring the role of d-orbitals in chemical bonding is discussed.

Organic semiconductor technology has developed rapidly over the last three to four decades, providing thin-film electronic devices that are highly functional and extremely marketable.

In 1998, Wim M. Van Rhijn et al. tethered sulfonic acid on mesoporous silica. This contribution explores the impact it had of material science and green catalysis.

In 1990 the first measurement of Raman Optical Activity of a protein opened up this chiroptical technique to the biological world, which dramatically contributed to its further development.

In this viewpoint, we discuss the seminal work contributed by Dixon, who reported the first use of a bifunctional cinchona-derived thiourea organocatalyst for the enantioselective conjugate addition of malonate esters to nitroalkenes.

Nano-sized gold particles on solid supports offer unexpected catalytic properties, with new discoveries emerging rapidly for oxidation, hydrogenation, coupling, and other reactions.

The first paper reporting pristine TTF showed the outstanding properties of this singular molecule which paved the way to conducting and superconducting organic compounds.

In the late 1990s rigorous proof of coordination polymer framework or MOF integrity in the absence of guest molecules still needed to be developed.

Starting in the 1980s in ChemComm, the reports on cation complexation by calixarenes triggered a massive “big-bang” explosion of studies on these macrocycles.

Starting from the D5 dye reported in 2006, the properties and development of organic D–π–A sensitizing dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells are highlighted in this viewpoint article.

The impact of the landmark paper published in Chem. Commun. by Adrian Brook on the synthesis of a solid, stable silene is discussed.

In this viewpoint we discuss how the publication of the crystal structure of [C₂mim][PF₆] by Fuller et al. (J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1994, 299) helped to shape the perception of ionic liquids simultaneously spurring exponential growth in the field while leading to overgeneralizations that still plague the field today.

This viewpoint briefly reviews the impact of Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) oligonucleotides, first described in a ChemComm paper in 1998. A number of unique applications in oligonucleotide biotechnology have been made possible by the high binding affinity and specificity of LNA, and these provide the main focus of the viewpoint.

Alkyne metathesis catalysts are now readily accessible and relatively efficient, even for terminal alkynes.

The impact of the report by Allen and Senoff in 1965 on the serendipitous discovery of the first complex with coordinated dinitrogen, [Ru(NH₃)₅N₂]²⁺, is discussed in the context of what was known beforehand and the impact this work had on coordination chemistry.

In 1962, Neil Bartlett published a terse note in Proc. Chem. Soc. eradicating the long held dogma that noble gases are inert and cannot form stable compounds.

The paper published by C. M. Drain and J.-M. Lehn in 1994 in Chemical Communications offered a new, elegant way of synthesizing, in high yield, porphyrin species with controlled structure and stoichiometry.

The emergence of a set of simple yet powerful electron counting rules following a classic paper by Wade published in 1971 in J. Chem. Soc. D has transformed the way chemists think about the structures of clusters with delocalised skeletal bonding.

In this viewpoint we discuss the contributions from John S. Wilkes and Michael J. Zaworotko concerning the discovery of stable ionic liquids (ILs) and their accompanying structural studies (J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1992, 965) and those of Robin D. Rogers and James H. Davis et al. who described the rational modification of ILs for specific applications – so-called task-specific ionic liquids (TSILs) (Chem. Commun., 2001, 135).

Metal-bound halogen atoms are good hydrogen- (HB) and halogen bond (XB) acceptors.

Synthesis of calix[4]arene ethers providing pendent chelating groups proved to be the basis of an extensive field of coordination chemistry with truly practical applications.

Two papers showing fullerenes as a huge family of new nanoforms of carbon and the way to supramolecular chemistry of fullerenes are discussed.

In this viewpoint, we discuss two contributions from Inagaki et al. and Kleitz et al., respectively, and present an overview of their historical contributions to the synthesis and evolution of ordered mesoporous materials, as well as the progress based on the achievements.

In 1994 the field of coordination frameworks was still in its infancy and yet to give birth to its offspring research field of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs).

We discuss the impact of the pioneering work of Murphy et al. on the solution phase synthesis of anisotropic metal nanostructures.

The 1979 X-ray crystal structure of the p-t-butylcalix[4]arene toluene 1 : 1 intra-cavity inclusion complex proved a landmark result that established the iconic calixarene shape, proved the tetrameric calixarene structure and showed that an intrinsic molecular cavity in an artificial receptor could contain a guest molecule.

In this viewpoint we discuss the early contribution from Brust et al., which is not only the most cited paper ever published in Chem. Commun., but also a landmark in gold nanoparticle research and in nanotechnology.