Organic Chemistry - A Definition Organic chemistry focuses on molecules mainly composed of carbon and hydrogen, along with a handful of other elements - such as oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, sulfur, and phosphorus. Organic chemistry deals with synthetic methods, reaction mechanisms and kinetics, and uses analytical methods for reaction control and purification such as chromatography (TLC, GC, HPLC), and structure confirmation such as NMR and IR, but also structure determination such as NMR and X-ray crystallography. New fields of organic chemistry for example include organometallic chemistry, which is the study of carbon-based compounds that contain metals, and bioorganic chemistry, which combines organic chemistry and biochemistry. Methods of organic chemistry are used in medicinal chemistry, natural product chemistry, and materials science. In the industry, organic chemists work in discovery chemistry (making new molecules) and process optimization (finding better synthetic methods for large scale production).