Scientists managed to capture on video the 'dance' of two atoms as they bind to each other, disintegrate and come back together.
In a sequence of electron microscope images, two atoms of rhenium metal bonded together 'poured' around each other, moving closer and then further apart. In the video, this atomic bond showed the order of bonds, or the number of chemical bonds between two atoms, and how that bond order changed over time. The closer the atoms were to each other, the greater the number of bonds. On close approach, the atoms had four bonds linking them together.
To facilitate visualization, the scientists have encased the molecules in carbon nanotubes. But then, by chance, one molecule escaped from its confinement and ended up in the gap between two nanotubes. There, the bond between the atoms was completely severed, Science Advances reported on January 17.
Direct observation of how chemical bonds change “has not been done before,” says physicist Ute Kaiser of the University of Ulm in Germany.
Kaiser and his colleagues took the pictures with an electron microscope specially designed to operate at low voltages so that its electron beam would not damage the carbon nanotubes.
Sources: Photo: UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
