On a gold surface in an ultra-high vacuum, molecules that are still next to each other can be made to combine - even those that never want to react with each other in liquids. Researchers at Empa, together with the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, have now discovered such a reaction.
When the temperature is slowly increased to around 200 °C, an astonishing reaction takes place on the golden "dance floor" that would never take place in liquids: two isopropyl groups combine to form a benzene ring and carbon radicals are formed that enable further reactions.
It is also interesting that the researchers can watch each reaction step by simply increasing the heating of the gold surface step by step and thus follow the reaction mechanism in the form of "snapshots", so to speak. The researchers expect that the method will also be suitable for elucidating other reaction mechanisms and that the results can later be transferred to liquid chemistry.
