The back cover picture shows the asymmetric synthesis of α ‐substituted mercaptoglycine via nickel(II) complex. The α ‐substituted mercaptoglycine is an important framework of various peptide drugs and nickel(II) complex can be utilized to generate single enantiomer of α ‐substituted amino acid efficiently. This work establishes an efficient method to access α ‐substituted mercaptoglycine with good yield and high stereoselectivity, which can promote the design of new peptide drugs in a broad scope. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 1383‐1390.
The inside cover picture shows a temperature controllable porphyrin aluminum catalyst using 5,10,15,20‐tetra(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8‐octahydro‐1,4:5,8‐dimethanoanthracen‐9‐yl)porphyrin as ligand, which showed significantly temperature‐responsive selectivity in the coupling reaction of CO2 and PO. Only cycloaddition reaction happened at temperature above 75 °C to produce 100% CPC, whereas copolymerization became dominant to afford PPC with selectivity over 91% at temperature below 50 °C. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 299–305.
The back cover picture shows Genkwadane A was isolated from the flower buds of Daphne genkwa which shows bioactivity against HeLa, HepG2, HT‐1080, MCF‐7, A549, U‐937, K562 and HL60 cell lines. It is the first time that a daphnane diterpenoid bearing a 1,10‐double bond was isolated. In this paper, B. Liu and co‐workers report asymmetric synthesis of the ring A substructure of genkwadane A in 10 steps from D‐tartrate derivative. More details are discussed in the article by Liu et al. on page 831–836.
The back cover picture shows a convenient and practicable synthesis of novel 2‐(trifluoromethyl)‐6‐arylimidazo[2,1‐b][1,3,4]‐thiadiazole (bis‐)Mannich base derivatives containing various substitutedpiperazine motif. Based on the C‐Mannich reaction of unusual intermediate – 2‐(trifluoromethyl)‐6‐arylimidazothiadiazole, with (4‐substituted) piperazine and formaldehyde in ethanol and acetic acid, the target compounds have been achieved conveniently with satisfying yields. Meanwhile, the cover picture shows that some of the target compounds possess favourable pesticidal activities (e.g. fungicidal and insecticidal). This research will provide important information for relevant synthetic studies of imidazole‐fused‐heterocycle derivatives and their applications in agrochemical area. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 635–638.
The cover picture shows a new protocol for the NiCl2 ‐catalyzed cross‐electrophile coupling of aryl bromides with pyrimidin‐2‐yl tosylates to give the corresponding C2 ‐arylation pyrimidine derivatives. This study provides an improvement over previous methods by using pyrimidin‐2‐yl tosylates instead of halides as coupling partners that are stable and easily available. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 1366–1370.
The inside cover picture shows Chiral β‐lactams and cyclobutanones are present in numerous natural and pharmaceutical products. A direct preparation of chiral four‐membered rings via metal‐catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation has not been described yet. In this article, we report an Ir/BiphPHOX‐catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of α‐alkylidene β‐lactams and cyclobutanones for the direct preparation of β‐lactams and cyclobutanones bearing an α‐substituted stereocenter. Our tropos phosphine‐oxazoline biphenyl ligand is essential for the preparation of the desired products with high enantioselectivities. More details are discussed in the article by Zhang et al. on page 612–618.
The inside cover picture shows Metal‐organic layer (MOL), the two‐dimensional analog of metal‐organic framework (MOF), is a new member of two‐dimensional materials. This tutorial review summarizes current synthetic approaches for MOL preparation. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 754–764.
The inside cover picture shows the excellent catalytic performance of mesoporous Nb and Nb‐W oxides catalysts for the conversion of glucose to 5‐hydroxymethylfurfural. The catalytic activity and selectivity for all Nb‐W oxides vary according to the ratio of Brønsted to Lewis acid sites. The highest HMF selectivity of 52% was achieved over Nb7W3 oxide catalyst. More details are discussed in the article by He et al. on page 1529–1539.
The cover picture shows para‐Quinodimethane (p‐QDM) and ortho‐quinodimethane (o‐QDM) are two typical examples of Kekulé‐type delocalized diradicals. The cover picture shows that the replacement of the carbinyl centers with isoelectronic aminium centers leads to the formation of isolable nitrogen analogues of o‐QDM. In contrast to o‐QDM, the nitrogen analogues exhibit unexpected non‐Kekulé diradical characters and features open‐shell singlet ground states with thermally accessible triplet states. More details are discussed in the article by wang et al. on page 487–490.
The inside back cover picture shows a simple and efficient Cu(II )‐catalyzed ligand‐free oxidation of diarylmethanes and secondary alcohols using 70% TBHP in water. A series of diarylmethanes were directly oxidized into diaryl ketones in 67%–98% yields. Additionally, various secondary alcohols were also transformed into the desired products in 48%–98% yields. Importantly, the catalytic system in the absence of any organic solvent, surfactant, or phase transfer agent, had a wide substrate scope and a high tolerance for various functional groups. More details are discussed in the article by Liu et al. on page 1391–1395.
The back cover picture shows a novel synthesis of 1,3‐oxazin‐6‐ones from enamides with CO2 through C—H carboxylation and one‐pot cyclization. The concept of “CO2 = CO + O”, using CO2 to replace toxic CO and stoichiometric oxidant, guilds the development of this chemistry as well as green and safe synthetic methods in the future. More details are discussed in the article by Yu et al. on page 430–436.
The cover picture shows The arylthio‐substituted tetrathiafulvalenes (Ar‐S‐TTFs) are electron donors having three reversible states, neutral, cation radical, and dication. The charge‐transfer (CT) between Ar‐S‐TTFs and iodine (I2) occurs in solution, whereas the Ar‐S‐TTFs are partially at cation radical state. In CT complexes of Ar‐S‐TTFs with I2, the charged states of Ar‐S‐TTFs are distinctly increased, say, the dicationic state is observed. The iodine components in CT complexes show various structures including 1‐D polymeric chain, and 2‐D and 3‐D iodine networks. More details are discussed in the article by Shao et al. on page 845–850.
Inside Back Cover picture shows The carps trying hard to make a successful jump over the Dragon Gate will change into fish‐dragons, which is a legend handed down in China over generations. The back cover picture shows photochemical and electrochemical CO2 transformations with organic compounds through the utilization of solar energy or electric energy, producing a series of valuable products, including carboxylic acids and hetero‐cyclic compounds. The combined utilization of both clean energy and CO2 has attracted increasing attention in sustainable development of renewable energy and green chemistry. Recent advances are summarized by He et al. on page 644–659.
The back cover picture shows an efficient dual enantioselective synthesis of 1‐substituted 1,2,3,4‐tetrahydroisoquinoline, which was realized through iridium‐catalyzed hydrogenation of 1‐substituted 3,4‐dihydroisoquinolines. Only tuning the amount of N‐bromosuccinimide, this reaction promoted by (R)‐BINAP is able to furnish both enantiomers of products up to 89% ee (S) and 98% ee (R), respectively. Dual activation role of N‐bromosuccinimide is proposed to be responsible for the reversal of enantioselectivity under two hydrogenation conditions. More details are discussed in the article by Zhou et al. on page 139–142.
The inside cover picture shows an outline of significant advances on exhaust gas e.g. sustainable CO2 recycling into urethanes via effective and renewable silver catalysis. Through one‐pot two‐step stepwise reaction of propargylic alcohols, CO2, and various amines, a wide range of urethanes are obtained in excellent yields and selectivity together with unprecedented high TON and TOF value under mild conditions. Here, robust catalyst is compared to Magician's hand for its versatility in organic synthesis, and the picture indicates the meanings of greenness and transformation. More details are discussed in the article by Zhang et al. on page 147–152.
The cover picture shows a new three‐dimensional non‐fullerene small molecular acceptor for solution‐processed organic solar cells. The acceptor was named SFTTIC using spiro‐bifluorene as the core unit linking with four thieno[3,2‐b ]thiophenes and end‐capped with 2‐(3‐oxo‐2,3‐dihydro‐1H ‐inden‐1‐ylidene)malononitrile. SFTTIC has a high absorption coefficient, good thermal stability and appropriate energy levels and the optimized power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.66% was achieved for the devices with PBDB‐T as donor material. These results indicate that the 3D non‐fullerene small molecule is potential for achieving high photovoltaic performance. More details are discussed in the article by Chen et al. on page 1687–1692.
The cover picture shows a synergistically directed assembly route towards novel multi‐component coordination architectures driven by aromatic donor‐acceptor and coordination interactions. The huge structural discrepancies between coronene donor present and absent experiments clearly prove the significance of aromatic donor‐accepter pairs and their inherent cooperation mechanism in these assembly processes. More details are discussed by Bu et al. on page 871–877.
The inside cover picture shows the excellent catalytic performance of Karstedt's catalyst for the hydrosilylation of olefins terminated with various functional groups (amino, alkoxyl, carboxylic, hydroxyl, aldehyde, etc. ) with the trimethoxysilane and triethoxysilane reagents in terms of the yield and selectivity. More details are discussed in the article by Gao et al. on page 1227–1230.
The inside back cover picture shows the construction of neutral supramolecular polymeric films containing well‐defined metallacycles as the main scaffolds through combination of coordination‐driven self‐assembly with post‐electropolymerization. A new 120° triphenylamine substituted dicarboxylate donor ligand and the complementary 120° triphenylamine functionalized di‐Pt(II) acceptor were employed to build neutral multi‐triphenylamine functionalized 2‐D metallacycles with the well‐defined shape and size via the formation of oxygen‐to‐platinum coordination bonds. Subsequent post‐electropolymerization of the obtained neutral multi‐triphenylamine containing metallacycles allowed for fabrication of a new type of neutral polymeric film with well‐controlled cavity sizes and thickness, which may have potential applications in neutral molecule detection, separation, and capture. More details are discussed in the article by Yang et al. on page 134–138.
The inside cover picture shows that four effective routes are applied to the anode material to help it keep fit, which is out of shape due to the intake of sodium ions. As a result, the sodium ion batteries (SIBs) with this anode exhibit high electrochemical performances, so that they tend to meet the demand for large‐scale energy storage devices. In this review, four strategies based on structural designs are summarized in order to accommodate volume changes of anode materials in SIBs, including nanoarchitecture configuration, buffer matrix protection, cavity volume reservation, and interlayer spacing regulation. More details are discussed in the review by Fu et al. on page 866–874.
