Chemists in academia and industry discuss what will make headlines next year

6 experts predict chemistry’s big trends for 2023

Chemists in academia and industry discuss what will make headlines next year

Credit: Will Ludwig/C&EN/Shutterstock

MAHER EL-KADY, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, NANOTECH ENERGY, AND ELECTROCHEMIST, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

Credit: Courtesy of Maher El-Kady

“In order to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce our carbon emissions, the only real alternative is to electrify everything from homes to cars. In the last few years, we have experienced major breakthroughs in the development and manufacture of more powerful batteries that are expected to dramatically change the way we travel to work and visit friends and family. To ensure complete transition to electric power, further improvements in energy density, recharge time, safety, recycling, and cost per kilowatt hour are still required. One can expect battery research to grow further in 2023 with an increasing number of chemists and materials scientists working together to help put more electric cars on the road.”

KLAUS LACKNER, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NEGATIVE CARBON EMISSIONS, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Credit: Arizona State University

“As of COP27, [the international environmental conference held in November in Egypt], the 1.5 °C climate target became elusive, emphasizing the need for carbon removal. Therefore, 2023 will see advances in direct-air-capture technologies. They provide a scalable approach to negative emissions, but are too expensive for carbon waste management. However, direct air capture can start small and grow in number rather than size. Just like solar panels, direct-air-capture devices could be mass-produced. Mass production has demonstrated cost reductions by orders of magnitude. 2023 may offer a glimpse at which of the proffered technologies can take advantage of the cost reductions inherent in mass manufacture.”

RALPH MARQUARDT, CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER, EVONIK INDUSTRIES

Credit: Evonik Industries

“Stopping climate change is a major task. It can only succeed if we use significantly fewer resources. A genuine circular economy is essential for this. The chemical industry’s contributions to this include innovative materials, new processes, and additives that help pave the way for recycling of products that have already been used. They make mechanical recycling more efficient and enable meaningful chemical recycling even beyond basic pyrolysis. Turning waste into valuable materials requires expertise from the chemical industry. In a real cycle, waste is recycled and becomes valuable raw materials for new products. However, we have to be fast; our innovations are needed now to enable the circular economy in the future.”

SARAH E. O’CONNOR, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL PRODUCT BIOSYNTHESIS, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

Credit: Sebastian Reuter

“ ‘-Omics’ techniques are used to discover the genes and enzymes that bacteria, fungi, plants, and other organisms use to synthesize complex natural products. These genes and enzymes can then be used, often in combination with chemical processes, to develop environmentally friendly biocatalytic production platforms for countless molecules. We can now do ‘-omics’ on a single cell. I predict that we will see how single-cell transcriptomics and genomics are revolutionizing the speed in which we find these genes and enzymes. Moreover, single-cell metabolomics is now possible, allowing us to measure the concentration of chemicals in individual cells, giving us a far more accurate picture of how the cell functions as a chemical factory.”

RICHMOND SARPONG, ORGANIC CHEMIST, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Credit: Niki Stefanelli

“A better understanding of the complexity of organic molecules, for example how to discern between structural complexity and ease of synthesis, will continue to emerge from advances in machine learning, which will also lead to acceleration in reaction optimization and prediction. These advances will feed novel ways to think about diversifying chemical space. One way to do this is through making changes to the periphery of molecules and another is to affect changes to the core of molecules by editing the skeletons of molecules. Because the cores of organic molecules consist of strong bonds like carbon-carbon, carbon-nitrogen, and carbon-oxygen bonds, I believe we will see a growth in the number of methods to functionalize these types of bonds, especially in unstrained systems. Advances in photoredox catalysis will also likely contribute to new directions in skeletal editing.”

ALISON WENDLANDT, ORGANIC CHEMIST, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Credit: Justin Knight

“In 2023, organic chemists will continue to push selectivity extremes. I anticipate further growth of editing methods offering atom-level precision as well as new tools for tailoring macromolecules. I continue to be inspired by the integration of once-adjacent technologies into the organic chemistry toolkit: biocatalytic, electrochemical, photochemical, and sophisticated data science tools are increasingly standard fare. I expect methods leveraging these tools will further blossom, bringing us chemistry we never imagined possible.”

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