Department of Chemistry – UNC Chapel Hill Chemistry Department

Department News

UNC Researchers Pioneer Light-Powered Technique to Enhance PET Scan Disease Detection

Researchers have developed a promising method to make radiotracers faster, more efficiently and with less waste.

Startup’s Trojan Horse Therapy Attacks Aggressive Cancers, Spares Healthy Cells

In a pioneering approach to cancer treatment, a North Carolina startup—dGenThera—has developed a targeted radiotherapeutic based on astatine-211, an alpha-emitting isotope.

In Seminar, Chemistry Alum Explores How Protein Movements Shape Their Function

Arthur Palmer discussed how proteins shift their shapes and why that matters for their function as part of a Biochemistry & Biophysics seminar series.

Electrochemist tracks protons and electrons to improve alternative fuel production

Montgomery, with her arms in a glovebox, turns and smiles at the camera.

UNC Chapel Hill graduate student Charlotte Montgomery investigates how molecular catalysts precisely move protons and electrons to drive chemical reactions and produce alternative fuels.

Scientists Develop Smart Polymers for Sustainable Rare Earth Recovery

The researchers' experiments found that increasing the hydrophobic component of their polymer improved its ability to extract lanthanides and that the polymer showed metal selectivity.

Study Finds Aged Biomass Emissions Could Pose Greater Risk to Lungs Than Fresh Wildfire Smoke

An Environmental Pollution study reveals how two key components of biomass smoke—levoglucosan and 4-nitrocatechol—affect human lung cells.

Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Atmospheres: How Sulfur Compounds Shaped Early Earth

An ACS Earth and Space Chemistry study revealed that sulfur existed in the early atmospheres in multiple oxidation states.

Sloan Fellowship awarded to Carolina chemist

Alex Zhukhovitskiy, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow and an assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded a 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship, among the most prestigious awards given to early-career scientists.

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.