September 12, 2010
Chemists at Duke and Stanford have prepared polymers that break and reform C–C bonds when yanked and relaxed (paper here). They engineered these polymers to contain cyclopropane rings in their backbones, using the electron-withdrawing effect of a bridging –CF2– to weaken the critical bond (see figure). Applying intense ultrasound to these polymers in solution [...]
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April 14, 2009
Volume 1, Number 1 of Nature Chemistry is now out, and the next issue will include an article titled “Activating catalysts with mechanical force”. This article reports a nice experimental result and helps to illustrate the broad range of physical processes included under the umbrella terms of “mechanochemistry” and “mechanosynthesis”.
The authors demonstrate two examples of [...]
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