ChemCafé

In an early April issue of Science was published the work of a group of researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales and University of Cambridge in UK, who built a robot scientist they appropriately named Adam. With its respectable dimensions (5 meters in length, 3 in height and width), Adam was designed such as being [...]

This afternoon came to EPFL Prof. Achim Müller from University of Bielefeld (Germany) to give a talk to our institute. Among a series of impressive giant molybdenum-based spheres (see figure below) he mentioned molecules belonging to either Archimedean or Platonic solids… Although the talk itself was quite fascinating, the question I was asking to myself [...]

I went yesterday to the chemical stores to get a new 2.5L bottle of acetonitrile, and I was stunned to see the price had moreless quadrupled since the last time I bought this solvent… I was aware of the world shortage of this compound, but had never so directly observed its consequences. The funny thing [...]

Some time ago came to Lausanne Prof. Lanny S. Liebeskind from Emory University in Atlanta, co-inventor of the Liebeskind-Srogl coupling. This coupling allows the formation of a new C-C bond starting from a thioester and a boronic acid. The reaction usually requires catalytical palladium as well as a copper-based co-catalyst, but a variation using only [...]

Hi, welcome to ChemCafé – the chemistry blog, my little corner on the huge Web!
I’m currently a PhD student in chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. This blog is where I share my thoughts on what I daily observe about the world of chemistry. So you’ll find news but also [...]