Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Chemistry riddle solved : The 2-norbornyl cation !

With support from Prof. Paul von Rague Schleyer from the University of Georgia, USA, a team of researchers including Prof. Dr. Ingo Krossing, Dr. Daniel Himmel, and Franziska Scholz from the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry of the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Karsten Meyer from the University of Erlangen has succeeded in capturing the 2-norbornyl cation as a crystal and determining beyond doubt the structure of this unusual and instable carbon compound. The 2-norbornyl cation is a non-classical carbocation, a molecule with a positively charged carbon atom that enters into five instead of three bonds with other atoms. Their article in the journal Science has ended a 50-year-old controversy among chemists.

Chemistry riddle solved

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