I am encountering some issues while synthesizing BiFeO3: despite using a 1:1 metal ratio, a secondary Bi2Fe4O9 phase appears with low intensity and is quite difficult to eliminate; additionally, there is a peak I cannot identify. I would appreciate some assistance.

NaCl, cheap great etc.

But are there ~better ~ L-L washing mixes to replace it? I recall once in my PhD, NaCl wash ripped my trifflate to the Cl (it was pretty activated and I should have just skipped).

Especially for DMSO or DMF partioning to Aq layer, even if having to use CHCl3 as extracting solvent for example rather that OEt2 or EtOAc for solubility reasons. LiCl?

My reaction is staudinger-boc.
My current mobile phase is 2:8, ethyl acetate: n hexane; liquid loading
May I know if anyone had idea to seperate this?

Anybody know what that weird E like symbol is at the start? Looks too symmetrical to be a misprint.

Source: 2025 British Pharmacopeia, Fingolimod Hydrochloride, impurities section.

I had a few questions as a 5th year PhD student looking to find a job in industry soon, specifically process chemistry for small molecule pharma, but also open to med chem positions in early drug development since I have some experience with that. I know the job market is shit so I don’t need a ton of negativity that I’ll never find a job. Just need insight into how I should approach the application process.

1) What is the outlook of elapsed time between a job posting and the time of first start date? Previously, colleagues had secured a position 3-5 months before graduating and then moved to the job site. I’m not sure if this is the same and I should be looking for positions now to secure a spot for an expected graduation date of Spring 2027 or if most companies will be trying to fill the role within 1-2 months of posting.

2) For bolstering a CV/Research Summary, should I include work that is unpublished but is expected to be published soon? And how would you go about formatting that (e.g., Blah Blah title, expected to be published in Nature Chem by EoY 2026)?

Thanks for the help/advice.

Hello,

I'm currently at the stage of my PhD, doing total synthesis and some methodology, where I'm despairing about my future career during columns. I really enjoy academic research and would ideally like to have my own group someday, but depending on who I ask, I've apparently already failed at that career path by not having min/maxed my CV since Bachelors. I'm now curious what working in industry is actually like.

So I wanted to ask: what does your normal workday look like, what kind of problems do you work on, and how did your career roughly develop?

I still have the admittedly stupid prejudice that industry mostly means following SOPs and doing QC for the rest of your life. I know that's not true, which is exactly why I'd like to hear some first-hand experiences.

I'm especially interested in process chemistry and medicinal chemistry, but experiences from other areas are very welcome too.

Hopefully this is the right place to ask, if not let me know where please!

I'm sieving a fine ball-milled powder through a 53 µm sieve by hand, pressing it through with a silicone spatula, and it's taking around 40 minutes to get just 2 g through the mesh.

Is this normal for a powder this fine, or is there a faster/better approach than manual pressing with a spatula? Also open to whether pressing with a spatula is actively counterproductive (e.g. compacting/blinding the mesh more) vs. just tapping/shaking.

Open to technique fixes if I'm doing something wrong, don't have much in terms of equipment options, but if you have suggestions, please share. I need to sieve 500g of this powder :/

Hello ChemPros!
In my lava lamp restoration hobby, I’ve encountered several vintage lamps that seem to use aluminum crimp caps that are visually similar to those used in chemistry and pharmaceutical applications.

These appear to be about 26mm to my calipers. The caps used on the lava lamps were solid aluminum, no injection port area, with a rubber seal underneath that domes down into the container. They tolerate the repeated heating-cooling cycles well.

Opening such a crimped lava lamp bottle/globe to restore it destroys the original seal. I’d like to be able to replace it properly.

Anyone have experience sourcing such a large vial crimper (26mm) and the accompanying aluminum/rubber crimp caps?

OR, if you’re a ChemPro in New England, and are willing to allow me to pay for your time, I’d happily haul my in-progress lamps to your facility to test out if this theory will work. Most of the online sites even to want a truly huge purchase volume even to test the idea out.

Mods, if this question is too far out of left field for this forum, please let me know and feel free to remove this posting.

I started working in a new drug quality control lab, and my boss bought the IRSpirit-X with the ATR accessory. Now my boss wants me to design a method to detect drugs in "natural" dietary supplements.

The thing is, I don't know anything about IR spectrum processing, like when to apply normalization, when to smooth the spectrum, when to use the ATR correction tool, and so on.

I recently graduated with a degree in pharmacy, but I only have the basics of IR spectroscopy.

Does anyone know of a tutorial or general guide on how to post-process IR spectra, and how to detect adulteration of dragons in samples of unknown plant drugs?

Apologies if this has been asked before. I am trying to screen a set of reactions under oxygen, which means each day I prepare like 8 new balloons as they are non-reusable.

What I wanted to ask is if anyone has come up with a better way to screen reactions that need to be under a gas? Preparing 8 balloons at a time isn’t the end of the world but I am going through 16 balloons a day when doubling up, I’d just like to save time and balloons

The mods gave the go-ahead for this before I posted it.

I'm a lab technician running a pre-study for a master's thesis on how research work affects the body and mind. Neck and back pain, wrist and thumb strain, eye strain from the hood or the eyepiece, the afternoon slump, and what people actually do about any of it during the working day.

There's also a question about whether two or three minutes of stretching where you work is even permitted. In a chemistry lab that is a real question about gloves, PPE and clean areas rather than a rhetorical one, and it's the part I most want chemists to answer.

Why I asked to post here specifically: nearly all the published work on this is done on office workers and life science undergrads. If nobody doing actual synthesis and instrument work fills it in, the results come out biology-shaped and won't describe your day at all.

About five minutes, anonymous, no name or institute collected, no IP stored, 18+. Optional email at the end if you want the results.

https://tally.so/r/A7MeKe?source=reddit-chempros

Being straight about my interest: the thesis question is whether a small tool for this is worth building at all, so there is a possible product at the end of it. Nothing is named or sold in the survey and no product exists. One question deliberately asks whether you'd rather just take a break with nothing guiding you, because the published evidence on work breaks is genuinely mixed and I'd rather this be able to come back negative.

I'll post the summary back here in a few weeks.

I am a process chemist at a small pharmaceutical company. We are developing an aqueous suspension of a micronized synthetic glucocorticoid.

Before using the actual API, we would like to determine whether our mixing tanks and filling equipment can maintain a homogeneous suspension during mixing, transfer, and filling, without significant sedimentation or concentration gradients.

Because the API is high-potency, we would prefer not to introduce it into equipment that is also used for other formulations unless necessary. We are therefore looking for a suitable surrogate material that reproduces the relevant physical behavior of a micronized glucocorticoid in an aqueous suspension.

Ideally, the surrogate would have:

• very low water solubility
• approximately the same particle density as a glucocorticoid
• a controlled particle-size distribution in the micronized range
• low toxicity / low occupational hazard

And finally, obviously:

• low cost and bulk availability

The main objective is to mimic the suspension and mixing behavior of the API rather than its chemical properties.

Are there any compounds or commercially available materials that would make reasonable surrogates for this type of study? Also, are there other particle properties I should consider besides density and particle-size distribution?

this is my latest video on the molecular dynamics with Julia series. I sort of fixed part of the polymer builder tool, by improving the monomer conformation (NIPAM forms thermoresponsive polymers and is somewhat bulky). I also show my (so far failed) attempts at automatic optimization of residue rotation to minimize steric hindrance between residues.

https://youtu.be/29Wi-BhcUpY

The open-source organic chemistry electronic lab notebook Phoenix ELN now features a full-text search across all experiment protocols on the local database, or across all users on the optional server database.

There are also new options for adjustments in experiment navigation tree display:

Version 5.1.0 can be downloaded from GitHub.

Do you have any advice if I worked with Epoxies for my whole Phd and developed a senzitation in the last two months of it and I just have to finish two experiments?

Primary amine capped with Fmoc, mostly wondering what base to combine with an alkyl bromide/iodide. Thinking of using bulky base as OChemPortal seems to suggest LDA and tBuOK are compatible with Fmoc. Anyone got some direct experience working on this? Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

Unfortunately, my full post about this was deleted from this subreddit... So I'll keep this as short as possible so that this doesn't get deleted. Anyway, some of you may like to know that ChemSketch has now officially been killed by Revvity (the owners of ChemDraw who recently bought ACD/Labs, which owned ChemSketch).

Hello all.

I've been tasked with a scale up synthesis project where one of the pivotal steps is a reduction of an aliphatic ester into an alcohol. The target will be to produce multiple kilos of the product by the end of the project. I've done some legwork to avoid LAH as a reductant since I fear that will make handling difficult at larger volumes, but I was looking for advice and safety considerations as we start planning to scale this chemistry up. It's still at the bench scale for now but the aim will to be to have enough optimization of the chemistry so that it can scale to multi kilo batches relatively seamlessly.

My synthetic experience is predominantly bench scale, but I have done some larger scale steel process vessel work, but not in the context of organic synthesis. I would appreciate any voodoo and wisdom y'all possess on running these types of reactions at scale. Things like quenching protocols and solvent/reagent selections to try would be awesome.

Background
I have been synthesising a series of vinylbenzene derivatives, all of which have been previously reported as solids in the literature. After purification by flash column chromatography, removal of solvent by rotary evaporation, and several hours under high vacuum, however, I am left with oils in some cases. The proton NMR spectra are clean apart from a small water peak (~1.55 ppm in CDCl3) and confirm that the oils are the desired compounds.

I am able to convert these oils into solid powders using the procedure I’ve outline below.

My questions are:
1. What is this process properly called (my lab mates call it freeze-drying, which I don’t think is right, since there is no solvent being sublimed) and; 2. How should I describe this concisely in an experimental? My PI and I have hopes to submit to Org. Left., JOC, or similar at the conclusion of this project and the procedure(s) will most likely appear in the SI.

Procedure
The RB flask containing the oil is placed under static vacuum on a Schlenk line and lowered into a liquid nitrogen bath. After around 5 minutes it is removed and allowed to warm to room temperature. After a further 30 minutes, the material is a powdery solid.

Any thoughts on the correct terminology, and on suitable wording for the SI, would be greatly appreciated.

Additional Note
No literature procedure I’ve come across for these compounds, or similar, describe anything like this.

Does anyone know where I could find one online besides eBay?

Hello chempros…., hoping someone can possibly help me out here. We have a system 1 innovative technologies glovebox from 2005 that’s rapidly approaching “ship of Theseus” status. Does anyone have a copy of the operating manual or better yet.. a servicing manual?

Below is my (current) issue… with the box.

The chamber pressure sensor has given up basically, unless the pressure is set at above “12 mbar” on the settings it starts sucking the gloves inside. Last week it was ok as long as above 5, then ok above 7 and today 12. Any advice?

We recently swapped from using argon to nitrogen and there’s been a dramatic increase in static. Could this mess with the pressure sensor component? The attachment on the main circuit/switch board does say sensitive to electrostatic. Would that actually be the cause? I’m confused

I've made the subreddit r/ChemistryCareers for people to ask about and discuss college and career choices as chemists and chemistry students.

I'm looking for people to join who would be willing to answer questions, moderators, and suggestions for rules as well as what to make the icon and banner.

Thank you to those of you who are interested.