Organic chemistry, LaTeX style

2019 September 30 Monday 21:59

LaTeX is the tool to typeset maths and chemistry symbols. It is a great pity that too many people try to use a word processor and drawing tool instead. At this time, some students may be introduced to chemistry synthesis via the aspirin synthesis. Isn't it tedious to draw those chemical diagrams and "curly arrows" reaction mechanisms by hand? Below is a more elegant alternative (that requires of course, LaTeX to be installed):

					\documentclass[12pt]{beamer}
					\usetheme{Singapore}
					\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
					\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
					\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
					\usepackage{helvet}
					\usepackage{natbib}
					\usepackage{graphicx}
					\usepackage{amssymb}
					\usepackage{textcomp}
					\usepackage{marvosym}
					\usepackage{multicol}
					\usepackage[version=3]{mhchem}
					\usepackage{siunitx}
					\usepackage{chemfig}
					\mode
					\begin{document}
						\begin{frame}
							\frametitle{}
							\chemname[0.4ex] {\chemfig{**6(---(-OH)-(-C(=[::+60]O)-[::-60]OH)--)}}{2-hydroxybenzene\\carboxylic acid} \quad + \quad \chemname[0.4ex]{\chemfig{H_3C-C(=[::-60]O)-[::+60]O-[::+60]C(=[::-60]O)-[::+60]H_3C}}{ethanoyl anhydride} \ce{->} ...
						\end{frame}
					\end{document}
				

Via the command terminal, output is beautiful pdf suitable for presentation. For speed, a (slightly corrupted) conversion to svg is shown below: