Department of Chemistry – UNC Chapel Hill Chemistry Department

Department News

UNC Chemists Discover How to Speed Up Key Reaction for Clean Energy

Researchers studied how a special metal—ruthenium—reacts when it's part of a molecule attached to a thin glass-like surface. This metal can help pull apart water molecules, a process necessary for a hydrogen-based economy.

Charlotte Montgomery’s Molecular Design Tweaks Paving the Way to Cleaner Energy

Charlotte Montgomery tackles a highly specific, but critical, question: how does tweaking tiny chemical features on a molecule affect its ability to form a crucial intermediate called a metal hydride?

Study Finds Light-Driven Chemistry Boosts Electronic Properties of Polymers

Dr. Wei You said his team's innovation could “open the door to scalable, safe and flexible organic electronics."

Chemistry Team Outwits Drug-Resistant Lung Bacteria Using Nanotech and Nitric Oxide

A team of chemists is tackling one of the toughest bacterial infections facing patients with lung disease—Mycobacterium abscessus, a fast-growing and drug-resistant germ that can turn deadly.

Justine Drappeau Balances Breakthrough Science with Big-Hearted Leadership

Justine Drappeau, a Ph.D. chemistry student, has become a trailblazer in something called C–H functionalization.

Reptilian Red Flags: Forever Chemicals Found in Alligators in North Carolina Waters

UNC researchers uncovered dozens of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including two entirely new compounds, circulating in the blood of alligators.

Scientists Harness One of Nature’s Strange Quantum Properties—Spin—for Faster Electronics

UNC and Purdue scientists designed a special material that can carry spin currents over long distances without the need for chemical doping or unstable components.

Chemists Use Light and Cobalt to Make Greener, Cheaper Industrial Chemicals

UNC chemists developed a new method to produce esters and carboxylic acids using visible light and a cheap, earth-abundant metal catalyst: cobalt.

Research

Fluorescence shadow imaging of Hypsibius exemplaris reveals morphological differences between sucrose- and CaCl2-induced osmobiotes

Herein, an approach for discriminating between tardigrade morphological states is developed and utilized to compare sucrose- and CaCl2-induced tuns, using the model species Hypsibius exemplaris.

Architectural Editing of Polyesters and Polyurethanes via Palladium(II)-Catalyzed [3,3]-Sigmatropic Oxo-Rearrangements

Herein, we disclose a backbone rearrangement approach to tune the short-chain branching of polymers.

Reductive Dynamic and Static Excited State Quenching of a Homoleptic Ruthenium Complex Bearing Aldehyde Groups

A new homoleptic Ru polypyridyl complex bearing two aldehyde groups on each bipyridine ligand, [Ru(dab)3](PF6)2, where dab is 4,4′-dicarbaldehyde-2,2′-bipyridine, was synthesized, characterized, and utilized for iodide photo-oxidation studies.

Valence can control the nonexponential viscoelastic relaxation of multivalent reversible gels

Here, we propose a model where the relaxation of polymer gels in the dilute regime originates from elementary events in which the bonds connecting two neighboring cross-linkers all disconnect.