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 As two important heterocyclic active groups, oxadiazole and thiadiazole are used to develop new pesticide with high efficiency and broad spectrum of biological activities. On the basis of our previous works, forty one novel 1,3,4‐oxadiazole/thiadiazole thioether derivatives were synthesized and their nematicidal activities against Tylenchulus semipenetrans were evaluated. And compound 33 was designed by using the CoMFA and CoMSIA models, which exhibited excellent nematicidal acivity in vitro. More details are discussed in the article by Song et al. on page 939‐944.
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.
A highly enantioselective one‐pot Strecker reaction of α‐fluoroalkyl α‐aryl ketones, anilines, and TMSCN is disclosed, which simultane‐ously reuses water byproduct and catalyst from the ketimine formation step as a promoter and an additive to improve the reactivity and enantioselectivity of the subsequent Strecker reaction, respectively. The picture shows that the chiral bifunctional tertiary amine mediated asymmetric Strecker reaction is irrigated by the water generated in the p‐TsOH catalyzed ketimine formation, and fertilized by the remaining acid catalyst. More details are discussed in the article by Zhou et al. on page 321–328.
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 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 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 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 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 cover picture shows a novel dual channel fluorescent probe for Ca2+ and Zn2+ based on a coumarin Schiff base. The probe displays a solvent dependent dual sensing, viz., recognition of Ca2+ in DMF‐H2O (9∶1, V /V ) solution based on C = N isomerization, photoinduced electron transfer (PET ) inhibition and chelation‐enhanced fluorescence (CHEF ) mechanism as well as detection of Zn2+ in H2O‐CH3OH (9∶1, V /V ) solution by excited‐state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT ) and CHEF processes. More details are discussed in the article by Guo et al. on page 1263–1269.
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 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 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.
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 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 cover picture shows a protocol of a palladium‐catalyzed arylation of vinylarenes with diaryliodonium salts with the assistance of visible light. A palladium‐vinylarene complex may be excited via the visible light irradiation, where the kinetic isotope effect (kH/kD) was around 1.1. However under darkness, the reaction proceeded very slowly, and the kinetic isotope was found as 3.6, indicating the C—H bond cleavage step is the rate‐determining step. This protocol avoided high reaction temperature and enabled us to access a series of ortho tetra‐substituted vinylarene atropisomers with high enantiospecificity. More details are discussed in the article by Gu et al. on page 11–14.
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 an electricity powered dehydrogenative [3+2] annulation reaction of (hetero)arylamines with tethered di‐, tri, and tetra‐substituted alkenes for the preparation of indoline and azaindoline products. The electrochemical reactions proceed through H2 evolution and thus avoid the use of stoichiometric chemical oxidants. This method, which is applicable to the preparation of highly functionalized (aza)indoline scaffold, enables the total synthesis of (±)‐hinckdentine A in 12 steps. More details are discussed in the article by Xu et al. on page 909–915.
The inside back cover picture shows the allosteric modulation of human serum albumin (HSA) induced by the Peptide SA06 ligand. Peptide SA06 is a reported peptide ligand comprising 20 amino acids, and is known to non‐covalently bind with HSA to extend the lifetime and improve the pharmacokinetic performance of drug molecules. The structural evidence on the allosteric interaction between peptide ligand and HSA, and the structure‐affinity relations of the binding mechanism have been revealed in this work, which can also shed light on optimization of therapeutic properties in the affinity‐controlled delivery systems. More details are discussed in the article by Wang et al. on page 1270–1277.
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.
