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As intrinsically stretchable materials for flexible electronics construction, liquid metal (LM) based composite conductors face challenges to achieve a high conductivity with minimum resistance increase due to the large dimensional change and poor wettability under a large tensile strain. To address this issue, a super-stretchable eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn) foamed elastomer composite is prepared with the assistance of a sugar template and O2 plasma treatment, and displays a marginal resistance change of only ∼31.3% under a large strain of 500% due to the reorientation and elongation of the conductive network. The EGaIn conductor exhibits superior properties of a high uptake of LM and conductivity enhancement from ∼2.38 × 104 (0% strain) to ∼2.97 × 105 S m−1 (500% strain) due to the strong capillary force during stretching. This work is a significant step toward high-performance stretchable conductors, demonstrating great potential in multifunctional device development including self-powered nanogenerators, electromagnetic interface (EMI) shielding, and thermal regulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screening of large and diverse libraries is the 'bread and butter' in the first phase of the discovery of novel drugs. However, maintenance and periodic renewal of high-quality large compound collections pose considerable logistic, environmental and monetary problems. Here, we exercise an alternative, the 'on-the-fly' synthesis of large and diverse libraries on a nanoscale in a highly automated fashion. For the first time, we show the feasibility of the synthesis of a large library based on 16 different chemistries in parallel on several 384-well plates using the acoustic dispensing ejection (ADE) technology platform. In contrast to combinatorial chemistry, we produced 16 scaffolds at the same time and in a sparse matrix fashion, and each compound was produced by a random combination of diverse large building blocks. The synthesis, analytics, resynthesis of selected compounds, and chemoinformatic analysis of the library are described. The advantages of the herein described automated nanoscale synthesis approach include great library diversity, absence of library storage logistics, superior economics, speed of synthesis by automation, increased safety, and hence sustainable chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated, miniaturized and accelerated synthesis for efficient property optimization is a formidable challenge in chemistry in the 21st century as it helps to reduce resources and waste and can deliver products in shorter time frames. Here, we used for the first time acoustic droplet ejection (ADE) technology and fast quality control to screen the efficiency of synthetic reactions on a nanomole scale in an automated and miniaturized fashion. The interrupted Fischer indole combined with Ugi-type reactions yielded several attractive drug-like scaffolds. In 384-well plates, a diverse set of interrupted Fischer indole intermediates were produced and reacted with the tricyclic hydantoin backbone in a 2-step sequence. Similarly, preformed Fischer indole intermediates were used to produce diverse sets of Ugi products and the efficiency was compared with that of the in situ method. Multiple reactions were performed again on a preparative millimole scale, showing scalability from nano to mg and thus synthetic utility. An unprecedented large number of building blocks were used for fast scope and limitation studies (68 isocyanides, 72 carboxylic acids). Miniaturization and analysis of the generated big synthesis data enabled deeper exploration of the chemical space and permitted the gain of knowledge that was previously impractical or impossible, such as the rapid survey of reactions, and building block and functional group compatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correction for "Chemistry at the speed of sound': automated 1536-well nanoscale synthesis of 16 scaffolds in parallel' by Li Gao et al., Green Chem., 2023, 25, 1380–1394, https://doi.org/10.1039/D2GC04312B. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hit finding in early drug discovery is often based on high throughput screening (HTS) of existing and historical compound libraries, which can limit chemical diversity, is time-consuming, very costly, and environmentally not sustainable. On-the-fly compound synthesis and in situ screening in a highly miniaturized and automated format has the potential to greatly reduce the medicinal chemistry environmental footprint. Here, we used acoustic dispensing technology to synthesize a library in a 1536 well format based on the Groebcke-Blackburn-Bienaymé reaction (GBB-3CR) on a nanomole scale. The unpurified library was screened by differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF) and cross-validated using microscale thermophoresis (MST) against the oncogenic protein-protein interaction menin-MLL. Several GBB reaction products were found as μM menin binder, and the structural basis of the interactions with menin was elucidated by co-crystal structure analysis. Miniaturization and automation of the organic synthesis and screening process can lead to an acceleration in the early drug discovery process, which is an alternative to classical HTS and a step towards the paradigm of continuous manufacturing., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

It has been claimed that quantum computers can mimic quantum systems efficiently in the polynomial scale. Traditionally, those simulations are carried out numerically on classical computers, which are inevitably confronted with the exponential growth of required resources, with the increasing size of quantum systems. Quantum computers avoid this problem, and thus provide a possible solution for large quantum systems. In this paper, we first discuss the ideas of quantum simulation, the background of quantum simulators, their categories, and the development in both theories and experiments. We then present a brief introduction to quantum chemistry evaluated via classical computers followed by typical procedures of quantum simulation towards quantum chemistry. Reviewed are not only theoretical proposals but also proof-of-principle experimental implementations, via a small quantum computer, which include the evaluation of the static molecular eigenenergy and the simulation of chemical reaction dynamics. Although the experimental development is still behind the theory, we give prospects and suggestions for future experiments. We anticipate that in the near future quantum simulation will become a powerful tool for quantum chemistry over classical computations.