Photochemistry articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    A couple-close approach used to build semisaturated ring systems from dual radical precursors allows sampling of regions of underexplored chemical space, leading to an annulation that can be used for late-stage functionalization of pharmaceutical scaffolds.

    • Alice Long
    • , Christian J. Oswood
    •  & David W. C. MacMillan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy is used to observe the primary step of singlet fission with orbital resolution indicating a charge-transfer mediated mechanism with a hybridization of states in the lowest bright singlet exciton.

    • Alexander Neef
    • , Samuel Beaulieu
    •  & Ralph Ernstorfer

  • Article |

    The synthesis of 1,3- and 1,2-disubstituted cubanes is achieved using a cyclobutadiene precursor and a photolytic carboxylation reaction, respectively, and copper-catalysed amination, arylation, alkylation and trifluoromethylation reactions have been developed enabling the use of cubanes as bioisosteres of benzenes in drug design.

    • Mario P. Wiesenfeldt
    • , James A. Rossi-Ashton
    •  & David W. C. MacMillan

  • Article |

    By using in vivo ultrafast TA spectroscopy, extraction of electrons directly from photoexcited PSI and PSII in cyanobacterial cells using exogenous electron mediators is demonstrated.

    • Tomi K. Baikie
    • , Laura T. Wey
    •  & Jenny Z. Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One picosecond after photoactivation, isomerized retinal pulls away from half of its numerous interactions with its binding pocket, and the excess of the photon energy is released through an anisotropic protein breathing motion in the direction of the extracellular space.

    • Thomas Gruhl
    • , Tobias Weinert
    •  & Valerie Panneels

  • Article |

    Installation of multiple C–O bonds by concurrent oxygenation of contiguous C–H bonds in a selective fashion is highly desirable, and this is achieved by repeated operation of a potent oxidative catalyst via electrophotocatalysis.

    • Tao Shen
    • , Yi-Lun Li
    •  & Tristan H. Lambert

  • Article |

    A genetically encoded triplet photosensitizer is used to develop an efficient photoenzyme that can promote enantioselective intramolecular and bimolecular [2+2] cycloadditions by means of triplet energy transfer.

    • Jonathan S. Trimble
    • , Rebecca Crawshaw
    •  & Anthony P. Green

  • Article |

    Triplet photoenzymes developed through genetic encoding and directed evolution result in excited-state photocatalysts that provide a valuable approach to enantioselective photochemical synthesis.

    • Ningning Sun
    • , Jianjian Huang
    •  & Yuzhou Wu

  • Article |

    Oxidative cleavage of alkenes is achieved using nitroarenes and light irradiation as an alternative to using ozone to break the carbon–carbon bonds, avoiding the explosive intermediates formed with ozone.

    • Alessandro Ruffoni
    • , Charlotte Hampton
    •  & Daniele Leonori

  • Article |

    Atomic-level imaging of photocurrents in a single molecule is achieved by combining a tunable laser with scanning tunnelling microscopy, revealing how photons turn into electric current via a photoexcited molecule.

    • Miyabi Imai-Imada
    • , Hiroshi Imada
    •  & Yousoo Kim

  • Article |

    Liquid ultrafast electron scattering measures structural responses in liquid water with femtosecond temporal and atomic spatial resolution to reveal a transient hydrogen bond contraction then thermalization preceding relaxation of the OH stretch.

    • Jie Yang
    • , Riccardo Dettori
    •  & Xijie Wang

  • Article |

    By combining the use of photoswitchable photoinitators and intersecting light beams, objects and complex systems can be produced rapidly with higher definition than is possible using state-of-the art macroscopic volumetric methods.

    • Martin Regehly
    • , Yves Garmshausen
    •  & Stefan Hecht

  • Article |

    Information from quantum coherence observations guides synthetic modifications of an iron-based chromophore, increasing the excited-state dynamics lifetime by a factor of 20, with implications for photo-induced electron-transfer applications.

    • Bryan C. Paulus
    • , Sara L. Adelman
    •  & James K. McCusker

  • Article |

    Water splitting with an internal quantum efficiency of almost unity is achieved using a modified semiconductor photocatalyst that selectively promotes the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions on separate crystal facets.

    • Tsuyoshi Takata
    • , Junzhe Jiang
    •  & Kazunari Domen

  • Article |

    Photoexcited acridine radical catalysts are found to have redox potentials more reducing than lithium, which is attributed to the population of higher-energy doublet excited states via a twisted intramolecular charge-transfer species.

    • Ian A. MacKenzie
    • , Leifeng Wang
    •  & David A. Nicewicz

  • Letter |

    Direct coupling of aliphatic C–H nucleophiles to aryl electrophiles is described, through the combination of light-driven polyoxometalate hydrogen atom transfer and nickel catalysis.

    • Ian B. Perry
    • , Thomas F. Brewer
    •  & David W. C. MacMillan

  • Letter |

    A photocatalytic strategy is described that generates diazomethyl radicals as direct equivalents of carbynes, which are often too reactive to use, enabling the functionalization of a range of medically useful compounds.

    • Zhaofeng Wang
    • , Ana G. Herraiz
    •  & Marcos G. Suero

  • Review Article |

    This Review discusses recent developments in the combination of organocatalysis and photochemistry for the activation of molecules, which has enabled previously inaccessible reaction pathways and influenced many fields of chemical research.

    • Mattia Silvi
    •  & Paolo Melchiorre

  • Letter |

    Luminescence induced by highly localized excitations that are produced by electrons tunnelling from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope is used to map the spatial distribution of the excitonic coupling in well-defined arrangements of a few zinc-phthalocyanine molecules and the dependence of this spatial distribution on the relative orientation and phase of the transition dipoles of the individual molecules.

    • Yang Zhang
    • , Yang Luo
    •  & J. G. Hou

  • Letter |

    Using single-molecule fluorescence imaging of photoelectrocatalysis, the charge-carrier activities on single TiO2 nanorods and the corresponding water-oxidation photocurrent are mapped at high spatiotemporal resolution, revealing the best catalytic sites and the most effective sites for depositing an oxygen evolution catalyst.

    • Justin B. Sambur
    • , Tai-Yen Chen
    •  & Peng Chen

  • Letter |

    Mapping the frontier-orbital interactions with atom specificity using X-ray laser-based femtosecond-resolution spectroscopy reveals that spin crossover and ligation determine the sub-picosecond excited-state dynamics of a transition-metal complex in solution.

    • Ph. Wernet
    • , K. Kunnus
    •  & A. Föhlisch

  • Letter |

    The use of organometal halide perovskites as the light-absorbing material in nanostructured solar cells has increased efficiency to practical levels; here it is shown that vapour deposition of the perovskite removes the need for complex nanostructures and will hence simplify large-scale manufacture.

    • Mingzhen Liu
    • , Michael B. Johnston
    •  & Henry J. Snaith

  • Letter |

    A solution-processable inorganic semiconductor is reported that can replace the liquid electrolyte of dye-sensitized solar cells, yielding all-solid-state solar cells with impressive energy conversion efficiencies.

    • In Chung
    • , Byunghong Lee
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • News & Views |

    An innovative marriage of techniques, combining the principles of common protein pull-down assays with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, opens up new ways of visualizing cellular protein complexes. See Article p.484

    • Philip Tinnefeld

  • Career Brief |

    A US federal grant for photovoltaic research will create hundreds of academic and industrial jobs.

  • News Feature |

    There is more to the eye than rods and cones — the discovery of a third photoreceptor is rewriting the visual rulebook.

    • Corie Lok

  • News & Views |

    How is light perceived? The answer that might immediately come to mind is, through the eyes. Fly larvae, however, can 'feel' light using specialized neurons embedded under the cuticle encasing their bodies. See Article p.921

    • Paul A. Garrity

  • Article |

    Light sensing outside the eyes is common in many animals but is usually confined to specialized organs. Here, the entire body wall of the fruitfly larva is found to be tiled with blue- and ultraviolet-light sensing neuronal dendrites, which are essential for the larva's innate light-avoidance behaviour. The phototransduction machinery used by these neurons is distinct from other Drosophila photoreceptor molecules but similar to a system recently identified in nematode neurons.

    • Yang Xiang
    • , Quan Yuan
    •  & Yuh Nung Jan

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