Atoms join together to form what8/4/2023 Because rhenium has a high atomic number it is easier to see in TEM than lighter elements, allowing us to identify each metal atom as a dark dot." In this case we trapped a pair of rhenium (Re) atoms bonded together to form Re2. Professor Andrei Khlobystov, said: "Nanotubes help us to catch atoms or molecules, and to position them exactly where we want. This group of researchers are known for their pioneering use of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to film 'movies' of chemical reactions at the single-molecule level, and dynamics of tiny clusters of metal atoms in nanocatalysts utilise carbon nanotubes-atomically thin hollow cylinders of carbon with diameters at the molecular scale (1-2 nm) as miniature test tubes for atoms. This challenge has been met by a research team from the UK and Germany led by Professor Ute Kaiser, head of the Electron Microscopy of Materials Science in the University of Ulm, and Professor Andrei Khlobystov in the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham they have published "Imaging an unsupported metal-metal bond in dirhenium molecules at the atomic scale' in Science Advances, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science covering all aspects of scientific endeavour. Advanced microscopy methods, such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), can resolve atomic positions and measure bond lengths directly, but filming chemical bonds to break or to form, with spatiotemporal continuity, in real time, still remains one of the greatest challenges of science. The challenge is that lengths of chemical bonds are between 0.1-0.3 nm, about half a million times smaller than the width of a human hair, making direct imaging of bonding between a pair of atoms difficult.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |