These are some recent articles from chemistry journals that should be available in your local chemistry library:

Natural Product Synthesis

Several groups are interested in synthesizing naturally occuring compounds which show interesting biological and medicinal properties. Among these compounds is taxol, a compound isolated from the bark of slow growing Pacific Yew trees. Taxol has shown promise as an agent against cervical cancer. Another interesting class of compounds is enediyne antibiotics such as dynemicin A. Dynemicin A gets its biological activity by cleaving double stranded DNA.

References:

Taxol: K.C. Nicolaou, et.al.
Journal: Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English
year: 1995
volume (number): 34(19)
page: 2079

Dynemicin A: S.J. Danishevsky, et.al.
Journal: Journal of Organic Chemistry
year: 1996
volume (number): 61(1)
page: 16

Self-Organization / Macromolecular Chemistry

Another intense area of research is macromolecular chemistry and self-organizing systems. Several groups are interested in making compounds which will organize themselves through hydrogen bonding or metal ligand interactions into larger, macromolecular structures. This basic research into self-organization on the molecular level could one day lead to construction of molecular sized machines and other "nanoarchitectures".


from G.M. Whitesides

References

Macromolecular Chemistry: J.-M. Lehn (Nobel Laureate)
Journal: Science
year: 1993
volume: 260
page 1762

Self-Organizing Structures: G.M. Whitesides, et.al.
Journal: Journal of the American Chemical Society
year: 1993
volume (number): 115
page: 905

Self-Organizing Nanotubules: M.R. Ghadiri, et.al.
Journal: Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English
year: 1995
volume (number): 34 (1)
page: 93

Advanced Materials

Technological advance is what drives many researchers to design advanced materials. Improvements in telecommunications, storage capacity of computer media, and new "optical" computers are envisioned. Some of the most interesting research under this topic has been done in the areas of non-linear optics, photorefractive polymers, and conductive polymers.

References

Non-linear optics: S.R. Marder et.al.
Journal: Science
year: 1991
volume (number): 252
page: 103

Photorefractive polymers: W.E. Moerner
Journal: Chemical Reviews
year:1994
volume (number): 94
page: 127

Conductive Polymers: J.M. Tour
Journal: Macromolecules
year: 1994
volume (number): 27
page: 2348

Theoretical/Computational

Another active area of research is the elucidation of reaction pathways and conformational studies using computational chemistry. Since transition states of reactions cannot be observed directly, computational chemist elucidate their structures using various force fields and levels of theory. Low levels of theory use ideal bonds lengths, angles, and torsions for calculating structures while the highest levels use wave functions of all the electrons in the molecule. Many mechanistic controversies have been settled using computational chemistry.

The transition structure on the left is for the concerted pathway of a Diels-Alder reaction. The transition structure on the right is for the step-wise pathway. The concerted pathway is lower in energy.

References

Diels-Alder Calulations:K.N. Houk et.al.
Journal: Accounts of Chemical Research
year: 1996
volume (number): 252
page: 103


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