A new Australian-led stud finds gold atoms (Chemical reactions are as good as gold) could be the key to unlocking organic reactions.
Living particles are the building blocks of the things we use every day – from our clothes and coffee cups to our phone screens. Controlling the reaction of these molecules is the key to creating things with functional properties.
Reactions targeting carbon-hydrogen (CH-H) bonds have been of scientific interest since almost all molecules contain these bonds. Led by FLEET at Monash University, new research (published this week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society) finds that individual gold atoms can provide a low-energy pathway for a reaction that can directly reach the CH bond.
The “HOLY GRAIL” of chemical reactions
“One of the goals of FLEET is to create electronic devices that can use weak technologies,” says co-author A/Prof Agustin Schiffrin.
Biomolecules can serve as useful building blocks for these repairs, as long as the reactions between the molecules can be controlled at the atomic scale.
The carbon-hydrogen bond is one of the most common bonds in molecules. For this reason, some researchers have described the ability to track CH-H bonds directly in chemical reactions as the “holy grail”. Unfortunately, two major challenges hinder the CHH reaction:
- Difficulty securing a specific bond for the reaction (negative choice).
- It takes a lot of energy to break these chains (high work force).
Anything glowing…?
Monash researchers discovered that a single gold atom can provide a pathway to activate CH.
The researchers attached a small number of individual gold atoms to organic molecules of 9,10-dicyanoanthracene (DCA) on flat silver, Ag(111).
“We use experimental techniques at the atomic scale – scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy – to image and interpret the samples,” says lead author Benjamin Lowe, a FLEET PhD student at Monash. “These methods revealed the bond between the carbon atoms of the DCA molecules and the gold atoms.”
The formation of such bonds suggests that the specific C-H bond must have been broken. Together with collaborators from the Czech Academy of Sciences, the researchers discovered a reaction pathway that suggests a metal-organic intermediate state formed by a single gold atom with a pair of DCA molecules. ability to help such a reaction.
Remarkably, the identified reaction pathway can only explain the CH termination of the direct CH bond. The researchers found a dramatic reduction in the energy needed to break this specific C-H bond (activity barrier), allowing the reaction to occur at room temperature.
Agustin Schiffrin, director of research at FLEET, says, “This study specifically addresses the two biggest challenges – namely low selectivity and high resistance – which limit the exact distribution of CH bonds in organic molecules .” “Our method can open the door to the synthesis of new organic and organometallic nanomaterials, with useful properties for electronics, optoelectronics, sensing, catalysis, etc.”
And When?
Given the great interest in the reaction of different molecules in different areas, this promising reaction has many potential applications such as the formation of polymers and the modification of drugs.
At FLEET, researchers hope to use this highly efficient selective reaction to create thin materials with desirable electronic properties.
