\n <\/p>\n
Chemists have synthesized a carbon-based molecule with an unprecedented \u2018half-M\u00f6bius\u2019 twist.<\/span>Credit: IBM Research and the University of Manchester<\/span><\/p>\n The M\u00f6bius strip, a twisted loop with one continuous surface, is inspiring chemists to create novel molecular structures. A team has synthesized a type of carbon-based molecule with an unprecedented type of twist, which they call \u2018half-M\u00f6bius\u2019.<\/p>\n To make a regular M\u00f6bius strip, one end of a ribbon is flipped by 180\u00ba compared to the other and the two are joined together. This object is named after the eighteenth-century German mathematician August Ferdinand M\u00f6bius who first described its properties. <\/p>\n What\u2019s peculiar about the half-M\u00f6bius molecule is that a chain of atoms is twisted by only 90\u00ba to make the loop, instead of a full 180\u00ba. The results are described in a Science1 paper published on 5 March.<\/p>\n \u201c90\u00ba is fun,\u201d says study co-author Igor Ron\u010devic, a theoretical chemist at the University of Manchester, UK, because it can twist either left or right. The two versions differ in what chemists call chirality \u2014 meaning that, like left and right-handed gloves, they are distinct from their mirror images. \u201cThe system knows whether you are twisting clockwise or anticlockwise,\u201d Ron\u010devic says.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a tremendous achievement,\u201d says Gemma Solomon, a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen.<\/p>\n \u201cTo my knowledge, this is the first molecule of this kind,\u201d says Rainer Herges, a chemist at Christian-Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, who led the synthesis2 of the first M\u00f6bius-strip molecule in 2003.<\/p>\n In the latest paper, the team created a loop of 13 carbon atoms, two of which, at opposite sides of the circle, are bound to a chlorine atom. This leaves 11 carbon atoms that link directly to their neighbouring carbons. They also each have two electrons whose orbitals are barbell-shaped and stick out, perpendicular to the loop.<\/p>\n These barbells form additional bonds with their neighbours, creating what chemists call a \u2018conjugated\u2019 structure, in which the electrons become shared among many atoms in the chain. (Various types of conjugated structures are responsible for some of the unusual properties of aromatic molecules such as benzene and of two-dimensional materials such as graphene.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chemists have synthesized a carbon-based molecule with an unprecedented \u2018half-M\u00f6bius\u2019 twist.Credit: IBM Research and the University of Manchester The M\u00f6bius strip, a twisted loop with one continuous surface, is inspiring chemists to create novel molecular structures. A team has synthesized a type of carbon-based molecule with an unprecedented type of twist, which they call \u2018half-M\u00f6bius\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2521,7727,18077,20930,23597],"class_list":{"0":"post-46025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-carbon","9":"tag-chain","10":"tag-chemists","11":"tag-mobius","12":"tag-wows"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Do the twist<\/h2>\n