An international team of scientists has developed a new technology that allows for selective rebuilding
Molecules are made up of clusters of atoms and arethe product of the arrangement of these atoms within. If oxygen molecules contain the same repeating type of atoms, then sugar molecules are made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.
For some time now, scientists have been engaged in the so-called "selective chemistry", the goal of which is to form just such athe type of chemical bonds between atoms that they need.
These so-called molecular machines wereThe subject of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was won by Dutch scientist Ben Feringa for his creation of a “molecular car” powered by molecular motors spinning at 12 million revolutions per second.
New research focuses on moleculesknown as structural isomers, which have the same atomic composition but a different arrangement of bonds between atoms. Using the tip of a scanning probe microscope to apply various voltage pulses, the team showed that they could selectively rearrange chemical bonds: a molecule with a 10-membered carbon ring in the center could turn into a molecule with a four- and an eight-membered ring, or a molecule with two six-membered rings in the center. .
These reactions were also reversible, meaning the team could break and form different bonds at will and essentially switch between molecular structures in a controlled manner.This form of "selective chemistry" is described by the team as unprecedented.