Viewing a catalytic reaction in action

To be able to follow and directly visualize how the structure of molecules changes when they undergo complex chemical transformations has been a long-standing goal of chemistry. While reaction intermediates are particularly difficult to identify and characterize due to their short lifetimes, knowledge of the structure of these species can give valuable insights into reaction mechanisms and therefore impact fields beyond the chemical industry, such as materials science, nanotechnology, biology and medicine.

Now an international team of researchers led by Felix R. Fischer, Michael F. Crommie (University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and Angel Rubio (Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at CFEL in Hamburg and Distinguished Professor at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián) has imaged and resolved the bond configuration of reactants, intermediates and final products of a complex and technologically relevant organic surface reaction at the single-molecule level.