Control with an iron hand: A broad range of ketimines underwent enantioselective hydrogenation in the presence of a chiral Brønsted catalyst and a well‐defined nonchiral iron catalyst (see scheme). This procedure constitutes an attractive and environmentally favorable alternative to well‐established asymmetric hydrogenation reactions with precious‐metal catalysts.

A novel zinc-catalyzed reduction of tertiary amides was developed. This system shows remarkable chemoselectivity and substrate scope tolerating ester, ether, nitro, cyano, azo, and keto substituents.

A pH-responsive volume-change function was successfully introduced into a supramolecular hydrogel that contained GalNAc-appended (GalNAc=N-acetylgalactosamine) glutamate ester 1 by the simple mixing of it with an appropriate amount of 2 a or 2 b amphiphilic carboxylic acid. In the 1:1 mixture (1:2), the hydrogel swelled under neutral pH conditions, but shrank to almost half of its original volume under acidic pH conditions. The structure and pH response of the mixed hydrogel were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), transmission or scanning electron microscopy (TEM, SEM), and Fourier transform IR (FTIR) spectroscopy. Well-developed fibers formed a stable hydrogel by self-assembly, and under acidic conditions the charge of the carboxylic acid terminal (from the carboxylate anion) was neutralized and then these fibers became densely packed. This macroscopic pH response was also applied to the pH-triggered release of bioactive substances. In this mixed supramolecular hydrogel, the hydrogelator 1 provides a stable hydrogel structure and the additive 2 acts as a commander that is sensitive to an environmental pH signal. The present supramolecular copolymerization strategy should be useful for the construction of novel, stimuli-responsive, soft materials.

While the iron is hot: The first general and efficient iron‐catalyzed reduction of secondary and tertiary amides into amines using polymethylhydrosiloxane (PMHS) has been developed (see scheme).

Various creatures, such as spider silk and cacti, have harnessed their surface structures to collect fog for survival. These surfaces typically stay dry and have a large contact hysteresis enabling them to move a condensed water droplet, resulting in an intermittent transport state and a relatively reduced speed. In contrast to these creatures, here we demonstrate that Nepenthes alata offers a remarkably integrated system on its peristome surface to harvest water continuously in a humid environment. Multicurvature structures are equipped on the peristome to collect and transport water continuously in three steps: nucleation of droplets on the ratchet teeth, self-pumping of water collection that steadily increases by the concavity, and transport of the acquired water to overflow the whole arch channel of the peristome. The water-wetted peristome surface can further enhance the water transport speed by ∼300 times. The biomimetic design expands the application fields in water and organic fogs gathering to the evaporation tower, laboratory, kitchen, and chemical industry.

Various iron carbonyl clusters such as Fe2(CO)9 or [Et3NH][HFe3(CO)11] are shown to catalyze the dehydration of amides into the corresponding nitriles in the presence of silanes in high yields; this novel protocol showed good functional group tolerance and wide substrate scope.

A novel two-dimensional cationic framework [Zn(TCA)(BIB)]·(NO) (1) (HTCA = tricarboxytriphenyl amine, BIB = 1,3-bis(imidazol-1-ylmethyl)benzene) was successfully achieved. Compound 1 not only presents a moderate affinity toward CO molecules, but it also displays good catalytic performance and substrate selectivity toward both CO conversion with epoxides and Knoevenagel condensation under solvent-free environments, taking advantage of the Lewis acidity endowed by lower four-coordinated Zn(II) centers and Lewis basicity originated from the amines within TCA. More importantly, the bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst compound 1 shows easy recovery and reuse without an obvious decrease of activity. Strikingly, compound 1 exhibits good catalytic efficiency for CO coupled with propylene oxide forming propylene carbonate even at ambient temperature under 1 atm pressure. To the best of our knowledge, compound 1 is presented to be the first cationic MOF holding great promise as a heterogeneous solvent-free catalyst toward both CO epoxidation and Knoevenagel condensation reaction.

Herein, we describe a selective cobalt-catalyzed chemodivergent transfer hydrogenation of nitriles to synthesize primary, secondary, and tertiary amines. The solvent effect plays a key role for the selectivity control. The general applicability of this procedure was highlighted by the synthesis of more than 70 amine products bearing various functional groups in high chemoselectivity. Moreover, this mild system achieved >2000 TONs (turnover numbers) for the transfer hydrogenation of nitriles.