Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 19, 2026

Chemfig

Chemfig is a LaTeX package used for creating graphical representations of chemical structures, molecules, reaction schemes, and structural formulas. It provides a simple and flexible syntax to define atoms, bonds, angles, rings. It allows for the construction of both organic and inorganic molecules using LaTeX markup.

Last revised
Jul 19, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
274 w
Citations
4
Source
Chemfig
DeveloperChristian Tellechea
Written inTeX
Operating systemCross-platform
PlatformLaTeX
TypeChemical structure drawing
LicenseLaTeX Project Public License
Websitewww.ctan.org/pkg/chemfig

Chemfig is a LaTeX package used for creating graphical representations of chemical structures, molecules, reaction schemes, and structural formulas. It provides a simple and flexible syntax to define atoms, bonds, angles, rings.1 It allows for the construction of both organic and inorganic molecules using LaTeX markup.23

Features

Syntax

Package preamble:

\input chemfig.tex
\usepackage{chemfig}

Chemfig uses a simple syntax based on TeX commands. For example:

\chemfig{H-C(-[2]H)(-[6]H)-C(=O)-OH}

Produces a structural formula for acetic acid and a structure would render as:

Acetic acid source ↗

There are 9 different bond types:

source ↗
\chemfig{A-B}\\
\chemfig{A=B}\\
\chemfig{A~B}\\
\chemfig{A>B}\\
\chemfig{A<B}\\
\chemfig{A>:B}\\
\chemfig{A<:B}\\
\chemfig{A>{{!}}B}\\
\chemfig{A<{{!}}B}\\
methane molecule source ↗

Molecular angles of a methane molecule:

\chemfig{C(-[:0]H)(-[:90]H)(-[:180]H)(-[:270]H)}
See also

See also

References

References

  1. "Chemistry formulae". www.overleaf.com.
  2. "chemfig" (PDF). tug.ctan.org.
  3. Wright, Joseph (August 25, 2012). "Exploring ChemFig: Basics". Some TeX Developments.
  4. Brefo-Mensah, Eric K.; Palmer, Michael (October 2, 2012). "mol2chemfig, a tool for rendering chemical structures from molfile or SMILES format to LATE X code". Journal of Cheminformatics. 4 (1): 24. doi:10.1186/1758-2946-4-24. PMC 3551648. PMID 23031664.
External links