If chemists built cars, they would fill a factory with car parts, set it on fire, and sift from the ashes pieces that looked like cars.
This is a reasonable process when you're dealing with car parts that are large. Chemists want to reduce the waste and make reactions more precise.
Researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the University of Regensburg in Germany, and IBM Research Europe were able to force a single molecule to undergo a series of changes.
Ordinarily, chemists gain precision over reactions by tweaking parameters such as the pH, adding or removing available Proton donors to manage the way molecule might share or swap electrons to form their bonds
The basic mechanisms governing selectivity often remain elusive because the reaction conditions are altered to such a degree.
It's hard to get a precise measure of what's happening at each and every bond because of the complexity of forces at work.
The team started with a substance that looked like a row of four honeycomb cells flanked by four chlorine atoms.
The researchers put a thin layer of material on top of a piece of copper and drove the chlorine-bees away.
There is a single molecule that has been rearranged into isomers.
Two of the electrons in some of the structures were able to reestablish their relationship with each other. The second pair wanted to pair up with any other electron that was available.
The structure would be short-lived if the remaining electrons married up with each other. This system was not an ordinary one according to the researchers.
With a gentle push of voltage from an atom-sized cattle prod, they showed they could force a single molecule to connect that second pair of electrons in such a way that the four cells were pulled out of alignment.
The structure of the abutadiene ring was distorted by the electrons who rearranged the structure differently.
Each product was put back into its original state with a pulse of electrons and ready to flip again.
The researchers could gain insight into the behavior of electrons and the stability of organic compounds by forcing a single molecule to contort into different shapes.
It could be possible to find catalysts that could push a large-scale reaction of countless molecule in one direction.
Similar methods have been used in previous studies to visualize the reconfigurations of individual molecule. New methods for tweaking the bonds of molecule to form isomers are being built.
Not only does research like this help make chemistry more precise, it also provides engineers with new tools to make machines on a smaller scale.
The research was published in a journal.
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