Accelerate your organization's understanding of cutting-edge science with perpetual access to these 20 essential primers.
ACS In Focus primers help readers of all levels accelerate their fundamental understanding of new topics and core techniques from across the sciences. Collection 3, which contains 20 primers, is available for one-time, perpetual-access purchase by organizations.
Primers on energy and the environment continue to play an important role in Collection 3 as they have in part collections. Six primers introduce important topics around energy and the environment.
For example, two primers introduce the fundamentals of electrochemistry as well as electrochemical imaging. Many of the devices of tomorrow will rely on knowledge of and discoveries in electrochemistry and many of these will contribute to a greener planet—fuel cells that efficiently convert hydrogen fuel to usable energy and the carbon capture and conversion devices that will turn greenhouse gases into valuable products.
For Collection 3, a variety of timely topics are included, such as:
- Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Removal (Barrett, Rish, Vlahos, U of CT)
- Charge Transfer & Organic Photoelectrochemistry (Rybicka-Jasińska, Vullev, Polish Academy of Science)
- Dynamics of a Liquid Droplet (Khare, U of Cincinnati)
- Electrochemistry Fundamentals (Clarke, Renault, & Dick, Purdue U)
- Electrochemical Imaging (Lewis, Wan, Leininger, & Zhang, U of WA)
- Hydrothermal Chemistry (Yang & Aspin, Oakland U)
Polymers have their strongest showing yet in this collection with four primers:
- Conjugated Polymers (Rasmussen, Gilman, & Wilcox, NDSU)
- Force-Responsive Networks (Sonu, Peyton, U Mass, Amherst).
- Machine Learning for Polymer Informatics (Li & Yue, University of Wisconsin Madison)
- Theory of Block Polymer Self-Assembly (Magruder & Dorfman, U of MN)
Materials science primers continue to focus on important nano-sized materials:
- Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (Rezaee, Dahal & Li, Florida International University)
- Quantum Confined Semiconductor Nanocrystals (Chiang, Morshed, Krauss, University of Rochester)
Techniques in this collection include:
- Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (Yang & Feng, NDSU)
- QM/MM Methods (Lin, Univ Co, Denver)
- Single-Molecular Spectroscopy (Kelley, UC Merced)
Human health is the goal of these two biological & organic primers:
- Carbohydrate Synthesis (Bennett, Tufts &, Nguyen, NYU)
- The Versatile Organic Chemistry of Sulfur (IV) (Porte, Tinelli, Grant, Kaiser, & Maulide, U of Vienna)
Finally, a few topics important to chemists but firmly planted in biological sciences are:
- Protein Folding (Orellan & Haglund, U of HA)
- Directed Evolution (Leconte & Collee, Claremont McKenna)
Life as we know it would not exist if proteins did not fold into functional three-dimensional structures. The failure of this process is linked to the pathology of various diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, genetic conditions (like cystic fibrosis), and cancer. It is no wonder that close to $2 billion in worldwide research funding has been devoted over the last five years (2019–2025) to helping scientists better understand protein folding.
While the field of directed evolution is vast and varied, it comes from a simple principle: to apply the principles of biological evolution in the laboratory to generate useful molecules. This widely used technique has yielded blockbuster drugs, essential biological tools, and many more useful chemicals. Considering its impact, it’s unsurprising that the 2018 Chemistry Nobel Prize was awarded for the use of directed evolution of proteins.
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