Breakthrough Biosensor Tracks Glycine in Living Cells September 22, 2025 Above: The pop art-inspired illustration highlights a new light-up RNA aptamer called Golden Broccoli that was developed throug...

Dehalogenation is a critical transformation in chemical synthesis but remains limited by catalyst deactivation and low selectivity in industrial processes. Here, we report an alternating current (AC) ...

U chemists discover critical steps bacteria take to oxidize potent greenhouse gas and how they interact in larger microbial communities.

U chemists discover critical step bacteria take to oxidize potent greenhouse gas and how they interact in larger microbial communities

Chemical data often have complex and nonlinear patterns in how data points relate to one another. Concurrently, there are many situations where chemical data ar

Profs. Henry White, Shelley Minteer, and Long Luo hosted the first Utah Electrochemistry Symposium (UTES) on July 25–26, 2025, at the University of Utah’s Department...

The Ni-catalyzed homo-Diels–Alder (hDA) reaction represents a convergent but under-investigated approach to preparing bridged bicyclic ring systems. Using the kraken monophosphine descriptor library, ...

Dr. Michael Pence, a University of Utah Chemistry postdoc co-advised by Professor Shelley Minteer and Professor Long Luo, recently received the prestigious 2025 NSF Mathematical and...

Congratulations to Dr. Sanaz Habibi, recent Chemistry PhD graduate, on being awarded the 2025 Thomas G. Stockham Medal for Conspicuously Effective Teaching! The Stockham Medal...

Herein, we investigate the origin of selectivity in the alternating current (AC)-enabled partial reduction of (hetero)arenes to cyclic alkenes. Reduction of (hetero)arenes can be considered as a reaction involving two consecutive irreversible electrochemical steps: the first generates the desired cyclic alkene, while the second leads to its undesired overreduction. Conventional constant current or voltage (DC) electrolysis results in poor selectivity toward the partial reduction products, originating from overreduction and base-induced decomposition of the desired product. Fast-scan cyclic voltammetry shows that the rate constant for the first reduction (k1) exceeds that of the second one (k2). Finite element simulations based on this experimental finding semiquantitatively capture the frequency-dependent selectivity observed in AC electrolysis experiments (i.e., increasing the AC frequency enhances selectivity). The results further reveal that AC electrolysis mitigates the low selectivity by only collecting the products at the initial stage of the reduction reaction, which is mostly under a kinetically controlled regime. We then extend the finite element model and introduce ΔEFOW, the foot-of-the-wave potential difference between cyclic voltammograms of substrate and partial reduction product, as an accessible proxy for k2/k1. A ΔEFOW > 80 mV predicts synthetically useful selectivity (>30%) toward the partial reduction product below 100 Hz.

The University of Utah Department of Chemistry welcomes Aurora Clark as its new chair beginning July 1, replacing interim chair Peter Armentrout. She brings with...