Turning One into Eight

Chemists invent technique for producing variants of natural substances

21-Feb-2024 - To synthesize potential drugs or natural products, you need natural substances in specific mirror-image variants and with a high degree of purity. For the first time, chemists at the University of Bonn have succeeded in producing all eight possible variants of polypropionate building blocks from ...

Researchers develop sustainable catalysis process

Method enables sustainable oxidations related to enzyme reactions

20-Jan-2021 - Acetals are important chemical compounds that are used, for example, in the production of certain medical agents. A new method now makes their synthesis easier and more environmentally friendly. Chemists at the University of Bonn have developed and optimized the sustainable catalytic process. ...

Chemists synthesize "flat" silicon compounds

Molecular exotics are unusually stable

05-Jan-2021 - Chemists at the University of Bonn have synthesized extremely unusual compounds. Their central building block is a silicon atom. Different from usual, however, is the arrangement of the four bonding partners of the atom, which are not in the form of a tetrahedron around it, but flat like a ...

The contribution of particulate matter to forest decline

20-Jun-2013 - Air pollution is related to forest decline and also appears to attack the protecting wax on tree leaves and needles. Bonn University scientists have now discovered a responsible mechanism: particulate matter salt compounds that become deliquescent because of humidity and form a wick-like ...