New research demonstrates a simple, eco-friendly method to break down Teflon® – one of the world’s most durable plastics – into useful chemical building blocks.

Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry

Students’ overall experience of university life and their assessment outcomes are partly determined by their engagement with teaching activities, which is in turn influenced by their sense of social cohesion with their peers. In addition to providing pastoral support, in our role as Senior Tutors, we encourage the formation of a more cohesive learning community among chemistry students post-COVID. With the aim of building better connections both between us and the new student cohort and between the students themselves, we have introduced new Senior Tutor Check-In sessions, which are built around a new chemical drawing game: CHEMmunicate. Across the first semester, we held 8 sessions with ca. 12–16 new first year chemistry undergraduate students in which two teams competed to draw chemical structures using yes/no questions (total: 200 participants over two separate cohorts). In this paper, we outline the rules of the game and provide tips for session leaders seeking to implement it at other institutions. Moreover, through analysis of student feedback from questionnaires and a focus group, we demonstrate how CHEMmunicate and the Senior Tutor Check-In sessions can prove beneficial in building student cohesion and enhancing students’ learning of organic chemistry.

C−F Insertion reactions represent a powerful approach to prepare complex fluorinated compounds, yet they are extremely scarce. Here we report a hydrogen bonding-mediated system that allows for activa...

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The combination of N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) organocatalysis with photochemical activation is becoming increasingly established as an approach for conducting radical organic reactions under mild and practical conditions. As comparatively easy to prepare and handle organic compounds, alkyl silanes are attractive substrates for radical chemistry as desilylative mesolysis of the corresponding radical cations is known to be rapid. Here, we report the successful application of benzyl silane derivatives as source of alkyl radicals in dual NHC/photoredox-catalyzed radical–radical coupling reactions with acyl fluorides. Relatively electron-rich benzyl silanes reacted smoothly to afford the corresponding ketones in generally good yields, while optimization of the NHC and photocatalyst allowed for a wider scope including primary benzyl substrates. Furthermore, initial experiments revealed that organosilanes bearing N-, O- and S-heteroatoms can also serve as alkyl radical sources under these conditions.