Advance ability to control chemical reactions

Discovery offers a taste of the 'forbidden fruit' of reaction dynamics

09-Oct-2018 - Scientists at the University of Toronto have found a way to select the outcome of chemical reaction by employing an elusive and long-sought factor known as the 'impact parameter'. The team of U of T chemists, led by Nobel Prize-winning researcher John Polanyi, have found a means to select the ...

Salt is key ingredient for cheaper and more efficient batteries

11-Jul-2018 - A new design of rechargeable battery, created using salt, could lead the way for greener energy. Researchers at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) have joined forces with a specialist group at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences on designs ...

With more light, chemistry speeds up

08-May-2017 - Light initiates many chemical reactions. Experiments at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Physics have for the first time demonstrated that increasing the intensity of illumination some reactions can ...

Femtosecond X-ray spectroscopy

Coming to a lab bench near you

10-Apr-2017 - The ephemeral electron movements in a transient state of a reaction important in biochemical and optoelectronic processes have been captured and, for the first time, directly characterized using ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ...

A novel catalyst design opens possibility to hydrogen vehicle

23-Nov-2016 - A new research, affiliated with UNIST has presented a novel strategy for non-precious metal catalyst that can replace rare and expensive platinum(Pt)-based catalyst, currently used in hydrogen fuel cell. In their study Professor Sang Hoon Joo of Energy and Chemical Engineering and his team have ...

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 ...

Viewing a catalytic reaction in action

Researchers monitors the steps of a chemical reaction mediated by a metallic surface

06-May-2016 - To be able to follow and directly visualize how the structure of molecules changes when they undergo complex chemical transformations has been a long-standing goal of chemistry. While reaction intermediates are particularly difficult to identify and characterize due to their short lifetimes, ...