Analysing a chemist’s wish-list

Chemistry is often seen as synthesising new molecules and materials, but being able to analyse what you have made is just as important. The wet chemical tests and titrations of yesteryear have now largely been replaced by spectroscopic or crystallographic methods, probing elemental composition, crystal structure, molecular mass or nuclear spin. We’ve come a long way since Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff’s first flame emissive spectroscope in 1860, which they used to identify elements, even discovering a few along the way (rubidium, caesium, thallium and indium – all named after the colours observed). We now have methods that can detect parts per billion quantities and can image some molecules at the angstrom scale.

But have we come far enough? Is our ability to analyse keeping up with the progress synthetic chemists are making? Can we probe mixtures or analyse reactions progressing in real time or follow functional materials changing as they perform? And what about larger biological molecules, whose structures need to be understood in their natural environments. Today’s chemists still have a wish list of things they would like to analyse, but are beyond our current capabilities.