Golden Ball Mills as Green Catalysts

A gold-coated grinding bowl proves to be a real marvel

18-Jun-2024 - Less waste, mild reaction conditions, and no harmful solvents – only a very thin layer of gold is necessary to sustainably convert alcohols into aldehydes through mechanochemistry. A gold-coated milling vessel for ball mills proved to be a real marvel in the research work by Inorganic Chemistry ...

Light and milling balls for greener chemical processes

Reactions without solvents

16-Mar-2023 - A combination of photochemistry and mechanochemistry saves 98 per cent solvent and 80 per cent energy in a number of reactions. What’s more, the process takes less time than it does in solution. Light-driven chemical reactions so far were usually conducted with large amounts of solvents that are ...

How acids behave in ultracold interstellar space

12-Jun-2019 - Solvated acids tend to release a proton. However, they display more complex behaviour under space conditions. Bochum-based researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Ruhr Explores Solvation (Resolv), together with cooperation partners from Nijmegen, have investigated how acids interact with water ...

Catalysts for controlled cascade reactions

01-Apr-2019 - It is difficult to convert carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides into useful or harmless substances. Wolfgang Schuhmann wants to find a way and is being helped to do so by the EU. Professor Wolfgang Schuhmann intends to produce useful platform chemicals from harmful gases on an industrial scale using ...

How a crystal is solvated in water

The solvation process is of fundamental importance for chemistry – but is very difficult to observe

22-Nov-2018 - How a molecule from a solid crystal structure is solvated in a liquid solvent has been observed at a molecular level for the first time by chemists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The process is too fast to decipher at room temperature. The team from the Ruhr Explores Solvation (Resolv) Cluster of ...

Individual silver nanoparticles observed in real time

31-Jul-2018 - The particles have an antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effect. They are used in medicine and the food industry. But little is known about their mode of action and degradation so far. Chemists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have developed a new method of observing the chemical reactions of ...

Creating complex molecules in just a few steps

12-Mar-2018 - Researchers have found a way to convert single bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms in a chemical molecule into carbon-carbon bonds. This so-called C-H activation is considered a promising strategy for producing complex molecules from simple starting materials in just a few steps. The main ...

How solvent molecules cooperate in reactions

10-Oct-2016 - Molecules from the solvent environment that at first glance seem to be uninvolved can be essential for chemical reactions. This has been shown by researchers studying the formation of an ether in pure solvents and in their mixtures. They explained the underlying mechanisms in detail using ...