The cover picture shows the complexity of the reaction mechanism of zeolites catalyzed methanol‐to‐olefins (MTO) conversion. The MTO process plays a vital role in the production of light olefins from nonpetroleum resources. Despite of the successful industrialization of the MTO process in China, the detailed reaction mechanism is not yet well understood. The theoretical studies on the MTO hydrocarbon pool mechanism by the Group of Xie are summarized in the Chemistry Author Up Close by Xie et al. on page 381–386.
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 Two efficient intermolecular oxidative coupling reactions of (Z)‐enamines with isocyanides via palladium catalysis have been developed. In these transformations, the β‐C(sp2)‐H and/or C ＝ C bond were cut off selectively by using different anionic ligands, leading to controllable chemodivergent and stereoselective construction of a wide range of (E)β‐carbamoylenamine derivatives with intramolecular hydrogen bonds. More details are discussed in the article by Jiang et al. on page 712–715.
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 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.
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 simple milling‐mediated solid reduction method for fabricating of ultrafine gold catalysts. By solid grinding of the N‐modified SiO2 supported Au precursors with NaBH4, subnanometer‐sized clusters and isolated Au atoms can be facilely obtained by tuning the metal loading. This method establishes a good basis for fundamental understanding the size effect of Au in the hydrogenation of CO2 to formate, and provides a general methodology for supported nano‐catalyst preparation. More details are discussed in the article by Huang et al. on page 329–332.
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 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.
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 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 back cover picture shows X‐ray near edge absorption spectroscopy has been applied to cathode materials for lithium‐ion batteries to explore its structure‐activity relationship. The result shows that in the Li‐rich cathode Li1.15Ni0.47Sb0.38O2, as a model system, Ti ions replaced the Li ions and then made an antistructure defect. It would change our understanding to the doped method for the cathode layer materials and benefit for designing other more powerful cathodes. In the picture, the road has been represented by the curve shape of the XANES of the as‐studied sample. The atomic arrangement around the Ti ion of the sample has been put into the tank position of the car. NSRL, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, is the name of our laboratory. More details are discussed in the article by Chu et al. on page 1853–1860.
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 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 control of stereoselectivity in radical reactions is of great importance, but remains a formidable challenge. The cover picture shows that the enantiomerically pure compounds can be prepared in radical transformations using chiral transition metal complexes as catalysts. Recent advances are summarized in the review by Kong et al. on page 247–256.
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 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 cover picture shows a green and highly efficient synthetic method for the synthesis of quinazoline‐2,4‐diones from readily available isatins and arylamines. This method is interesting in keeping with the notion of green chemistry because of the use of hydrogen peroxide as the terminal oxidant. The rearrangement oxidation exhibited good functional group tolerability, metal‐free catalysts, obviating the need for oxidants and only environmentally benign H2O was released. Moreover, an antibacterial activity study was performed to evaluate the antimicrobial activities. The results showed that some of the testing compounds inhibited the growth of the Staphylococcus aureus (32 μg/mL) and Staphylococcus epidermidis (64 μg/mL), which could potentially solve the problem of multidrug resistance. More details are discussed in the article by Shang et al. on page 1835–1843.
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.
In this invited paper , docking deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) onto gold nanostructures provide promising biomedical applications in drug vehicles, biomolecular sensing, target therapy, and genetic regulation because of the combination of the characteristics involving the structural flexibility and hybridization specificity in DNA and the optical properties of the scattering and absorbing behavior in gold nanoparticles. More details will be discussed by Dr. Chen‐Sheng Yeh and his co‐worker on page 1250‐1258 in this issue.
