Watching a Bimetallic Catalytic Surface in Action

Such insight on working catalysts is only possible to obtain using state-of-the-art experimental techniques under reaction conditions

01-Sep-2023 - A team of researchers from the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society addressed the question: what happens to a Ga-promoted Cu surface under reaction conditions required for the synthesis of methanol? They found complex structural transformations of ...

Researchers produce polymers from ballbot-type carbenes for the first time

Researchers have produced long-chain mobile polymers on metallic surfaces, doing so by means of ballbot-type molecules which glide over the surface

31-Aug-2023 - N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) are small, reactive ring molecules which bond well with metallic surfaces and which, over the past few years, have attracted a great deal of interest in the field of the stable chemical modification of metallic surfaces. One property – discovered at the University ...

NanoCar Race II: Eight teams from three continents gather for the world's smallest race - the race of the molecules

24-Mar-2022 - When they hear the term "24-hour race," many people might think of Le Mans, Daytona, or even the Nürburgring. Images of colorful cars racing by at breakneck speed, accompanied by deafening noise and the smell of burning high-performance fuels may appear in the mind's eye. But at the NanoCar Race ...

How molecules self-assemble into superstructures

Researchers control the size of molecular superstructures on surfaces

23-Mar-2020 - Most technical functional units are built bit by bit according to a well-designed construction plan. The components are sequentially put in place by humans or machines. Life, however, is based on a different principle. It starts bottom-up with molecular self-assembly. The crystallization of sugar ...

Quantifying exchange interactions on the atomic scale

Research team from Kiel and Nijmegen studies magnetic spiral structure

11-Mar-2020 - Today, there is a great effort to scale down magnetic memory towards nanometer-sized bits in order to ultimately store information in a single magnetic atom. This makes it necessary to image magnetic properties on the atomic scale. At the heart of magnetism is the exchange interaction – proposed ...

Spontaneous occurrence of skyrmions in atomically thin cobalt films observed

27-Aug-2019 - Since their experimental discovery, magnetic skyrmions - tiny magnetic knots - have moved into the focus of research. Scientists from Hamburg and Kiel have now been able to show that individual magnetic skyrmions with a diameter of only a few nanometres can be stabilised in magnetic metal films ...

Physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

15-Feb-2019 - The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks directly, but rather by their mutual interactions, which are governed by their outer electron shells. Many chemical processes are based on the ...

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 ...

Chemical hotspots

Scanning tunneling microscopy measurements identify active sites on catalysts

11-Sep-2017 - Chemistry live: Using a scanning tunneling microscope, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) were able for the very first time to witness in detail the activity of catalysts during an electro-chemical reaction. The measurements show how the surface structure of the catalysts ...

Researchers obtain decacene, the largest acene synthesised ever

15-Aug-2017 - Acenes are molecules formed by the linear fusion of special carbon-based hexagons, widely known as ‘benzene rings’. In spite of its structural simplicity, these molecules have attracted huge attention due to their unique electronic properties; pentacene, for example, a member of this family with ...