Chiral molecular conductor with an insulator-metal transition close to room temperature.

Materials exhibiting both chirality and conductivity do not exist in nature and very few examples have been synthesised. We report here the synthesis of a chiral molecular metal which remains metallic down to at least 4.2 K. This material also exhibits room-temperature switching capabilities with a transition upon cooling below 10 °C.

Effective methods for the biotinylation of azamacrocycles.

The biotin-(strept)avidin interaction remains a gold standard of model biological recognition events. The biotinylation of azamacrocycles permits the investigation of signal transduction between this recognition event and the metal center of an azamacrocycle complex, of wide potential interest in biosensing. There are no generally applicable procedures in the literature for such functionalizations. We report here a comprehensive investigation into the attachment of biotin to TACN, cyclen, and cyclam. Effective methods have been found for each ring. The efficacy of the functionalization is critically dependent on the nature of the azamacrocycle.