IBM Research / University of Manchester
Representation of electrons in the molecule in the form of a “half-Möbius”
A ring with 13 carbon atoms and two chlorine atoms has a remarkable molecular structure: it would be necessary to turn the loop four times to return to the starting point.
A team of chemists discovered a new molecular form — and it’s twice as weird as the winding Möbius strip.
The famous Möbius Strip is a looped band with a twist, such that something tiny, like an ant, would have to go through the loop twice to return to the point where you started, on the same side of Tira.
Igor Roncevicfrom the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, and his colleagues have now discovered a molecule shaped like “half a Möbius Strip” even more peculiar.
The experiment could be the first step toward a new way of designing useful molecules by tweaking their three-dimensional shapes — that is, their topology.
“This molecule It’s very new and very unexpected. The interest is not only that we have made a molecule with an unusual topology, but also that we have shown that This topology is possibleand no one had really thought about it”, says the researcher, quoted by .
To create the molecule, they used 13 carbon atomso and two chlorine atoms, assembled in a ring-shaped structure on a thin gold surfaceat an extremely low temperature.
They resort to two specialized microscopes — an atomic force microscope and a scanning tunneling microscope — to control atoms and map the properties of their electrons.
In this type of molecule, the electrons are not strongly trapped to its atoms; instead, spread across specific regions around them, like small waves of matter.
It was the interactions between these electrons that produced the twist never before observed in the molecule. If a tiny quantum creature traveled along atoms, it would take four laps to the ring to return to the starting point.
A “Möbius Strip”
By stimulating the molecule with a small electromagnetic impulsethe team managed change your twist from “left-handed” to “right-handed” — or undo it. The researchers were thus able to “build” the topology on demand, creating yet another way for chemists to I would manipulate molecules.
To understand the new molecule and understand how it could even exist, the team resorted to simulationsboth on a conventional computer and on an IBM quantum computer.
Interactions between electrons were crucial to the new twists and are difficult to simulate accurately on conventional computers. But quantum computers are already built from quantum objects that interact with each other, so that they can carry out simulations with a greater degree of confidence, explains Rončević.
This is an example of how quantum computers can already be useful on real-world chemistry problems, says Ivano Tavernelliteam member at IBM.
“This experience is a remarkable feat in multiple dimensions: organic chemistry, surface science, nanoscience and quantum chemistry”, he concludes Gemma Solomonresearcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
