Scientists led by Roland Wester at the University of Innsbruck have discovered the metal recycling reaction in the first study. Observations can also be clearly defined. Through a study published in Nature, scientists provide an important reference for this important chemical effect. This is the slowest reaction ever observed from charged particles.
Reversal reactions in chemistry are difficult to predict. An exact description of the quantum structure of a chemical reaction with more than three particles is difficult, and with more than four particles it is almost impossible. Physicists use classical physics to simulate these reactions and they have to ignore quantum effects. But where is this classic description of the chemical Jeremiah made, which can only give an approximation?
Roland Wester of the Department of Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck has long sought to discover this limit. “This requires an experiment that allows accurate measurements and that quantum operators can still interpret”, the research scientist explains. Wester recalls: “The idea came to me 15 years ago when I was talking with a colleague at a conference in the United States. He wanted to find out the tunneling effect of quantum mechanics and simple reactions.
The tunnel effect makes the reaction impossible so it is slow, its experimental measurements are very difficult. However, after several attempts, Wester’s team has now succeeded in doing so for the first time, as they report in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Progress after 15 years of research
Roland Wester’s team chose hydrogen, the lightest element in the universe, for their experiments. They introduced deuterium – an isotope of hydrogen – into an ion trap, cooled it and filled the trap with hydrogen gas. Due to the low temperature, negative deuterium ions cannot react with hydrogen molecules normally. However, in rare cases, reactions occur when the two come together.
This is due to the tunnel effect: “Quantum activity allows particles to overcome energy barriers through their ability to act as waves, and reactions occur,” explains the first author of the study, Robert Wild. “In our experiments, we give about 15 minutes for a possible reaction in the trap, then we determine the number of hydrogen ions. From their number we can deduce the frequency of the reaction.
In 2018, scientists have hypothesized that in this process, the quantum tunneling effect occurs only one in a hundred billion times. This is in good agreement with the results currently measured in Innsbruck and, after 15 years of research, confirms for the first time the correct first-order method of tunneling effects in chemical reactions.
Foundation for better understanding
There are other chemical reactions that can exploit the tunnel effect. For the first time, measurements are now well understood in scientific theory. Based on this, research can create simple learning models for chemical reactions and test them in reactions that are now well demonstrated.
The scanning tunneling effect is used, for example, in scanning tunneling microscopes and in light storage. Tunneling is also used to describe the alpha emission of atomic nuclei. By including the tunnel effect, we can also explain some of the interactions of molecules in the sky in the interstellar cloud. Wester’s team’s experience thus laid the foundation for a better understanding of many chemical reactions.
Source: University of Innsbruck
