By trapping light into tiny gaps only a few atoms wide, a team from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge has magnified optical forces a thousand-fold, strong enough to force atoms into positions that drive chemical reactions more efficient.
The key to making catalysis work more easily is to reduce the energy barrier, and that's what we were able to do.
Weak tractor beams are used to make optical tweezers that can probe biological processes with beams of tightly focused light. Light can be used to remove single atoms from solid objects. A team from the Cavendish Laboratory has shown a way to build small crevices that amplify the optical forces of light. They pull gold atoms from a crystal, approach them close to a bond, and watch the effects on their flopping and vibrating. They show new ways to make light act powerfully and suggest new approaches for driving chemical transformation.
They don't average over a bunch of different effects if you watch one bond at a time. Prof Jeremy Baumberg says that single metal atoms are the anvil where the process of cataclysm can take place. Catalysis is an important part of chemistry.
Hu says it's like watching the beautiful dance of an atom and a molecule.
More information: Qianqi Lin et al, Optical suppression of energy barriers in single molecule-metal binding, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abp9285 Journal information: Science Advances
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