Thrilled to announce our trichalcogenophene research is the Cover Feature of #ChemEurJ! The beautiful cover by Rio's cousin uses a chamber ensemble metaphor to illustrate the harmonious S···S chalcogen interactions that stabilize our ZZ-trithiophene.
doi.org/10.1002/chem...

We've already discovered fascinating photoluminescence behaviors and unique isomerization dynamics, plus synthesized larger molecular architectures. These insights enable designing materials with controlled stereochemistry and enhanced properties. Excited to share more soon!

Personally, I'm most excited about successfully reproducing the solution-phase geometric isomer ratios using GOAT conformer search (recently introduced in ORCA 6.0) combined with CENSO. This problem had puzzled us for a long time, and solving it significantly expanded our computational toolkit.

Trichalcogenophenes have three geometric isomers, but trithiophene and trifuran show dramatically different stability patterns. We discovered this stems from intramolecular S···S interactions between adjacent thiophene rings using interaction analysis (NCI, AIM, etc.) mastered for this study.

Honored this work appears in AsianJOC's Special Collection for Prof. Masahiko Iyoda. We shared Tokyo Metropolitan University - I was an assistant prof. while he was a professor in a different lab in the same department. We're also alumni of the same high school, though from different generations! 🎓✨

We found that steric bulk of meso-substituents determines their tilt angle relative to the isophlorin macrocycle, critically controlling antiaromaticity strength. Bulkier substituents preserve stronger antiaromaticity!
Computational evaluation was achieved with Haruna's collaboration 👥

The package claims "Japanese home style noodles" but interestingly, this cheese yakisoba isn't sold in Japan. While Maruchan is indeed a major instant noodle brand, cheese-topped yakisoba isn't something you'd typically find in Japan. I'm quite curious about how it actually tastes!

2/2 The free base that led to our latest complex. The work made the Cover: hand-drawn using traditional Japanese calligraphy! The side texts in archaic Hiragana are so old-style that even most Japanese readers find them challenging to read!

See paper link in cover page: doi.org/10.1002/ejoc...

1/2 The origin story! This was my first paper on antiaromatic compounds, where we designed and synthesized the original antiaromatic system. A key milestone that led to our recent discoveries.

doi.org/10.1002/chem...

This unusual guest binding stems from the host's rigidity. We discussed the synthesis and structure in our earlier paper (doi.org/10.1002/cplu...) - where we also put special emphasis on developing the synthetic methodology.

Thrilled to share that our recent paper on antiaromatic triphyrin synthesis was selected as the Front Cover of Chemistry - A European Journal! Check out our art featuring the key 16π electrocyclization.
chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....