Static Electricity Is Used As Catalyst For The First Time

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[{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1457704488751","data":"Static electricity<\/b> is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains unchanged untill the electric current is applied. Static electricity have been harnessed by the scientists to control chemical reactions for the first time, in a breakthrough that could bring cleaner industry and cheaper nanotechnology.\nAn electric field is used as a catalyst by the team for a common reaction, the Diels-Alder reaction, improving its reaction rate by a factor of five.\nLead researcher Professor Michelle Coote from ANU Research School of Chemistry said the team had overturned conventional thinking with their new-found control of the common reaction, which is used to make a range of chemicals from self-healing materials to the drug cortisone.\n\"It's the most unexpected result possible,\" said Professor Coote, who is also a Chief Investigator with ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES). \"We now have a totally new way of thinking about chemistry.<\/p>"},{"type":"img","id":"img-uid-1457704767950","data":"56e2cf8c18f6c"},{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1457704788551","data":"\"Manufacturing processes could be speeded up by these breakthroughs and allow unprecedented control of chemical reactions, for example in manufacturing flexible electronic components based on organic circuits,\" she said.\nConventional catalysts are completely different from an electric field catalyst. These catalysts are often based on expensive rare chemicals, can create unwanted by-products or contaminate the final products.\n\n\nAs electric fields can be turned on and off very quickly from outside the test-tube, the new approach gives the researchers remote control over chemical processes.<\/p>"},{"type":"img","id":"img-uid-1457704811954","data":"56e2cfbad9616"},{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1457704839737","data":"Professor Coote predicted that electric fields could strongly affect reaction rates, but it had never been observed before because standard chemical reactions are conducted with molecules oriented in random directions in a gas or liquid.\nThe Centre of Excellence brought together a team, including researchers from University of Barcelona in Spain and Dr Simone Ciampi from the University of Wollongong, that devised a way to test Professor Coote's prediction, using the electric field generated by the tip of a scanning-tunneling electron microscope.\nThe group oriented all the molecules in the same direction by attaching them to a surface and then used the probe of the electron microscope to test each molecule.<\/p>"},{"type":"img","id":"img-uid-1457704864762","data":"56e2cfed376b4"},{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1457704884888","data":"By changing the strength and polarity of the electric field, the team were able to vary the rate of the Diels-Alder reaction, in which a conjugated diene and a substituted diene form a cyclohexene system, by a factor of five\nProfessor Coote said the result will help research understand a lot of natural biochemical reactions.\n\"Nature uses enzymes as the ultimate catalyst, which can vary reaction rates by 14 orders of magnitude,\" she said.\n\"Enzymes work with carefully oriented charged functional groups, held in precise orientations, effectively generating an oriented electric field within the active site.\"\nThis breakthrough helps in bringing cheaper nanotechnology.\n<\/p>"}]

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