Unlike conventional electromagnetic interactions, the chemical bond has not been quantified in strength by any known property of the participating species, until now.
Scientists in China say that bond energy (EAB), a quantitative measure of the bond strength, can be decoupled into two contributions of the participating reactants, which is a new principle.
The team verified their theory with more than 300 bonds, including covalent bonds in molecules and adsorption bonds on metal surfaces; this can be applied in a wide range of chemical reactions. Particularly, the characteristic complex quantity, termed ‘chemical amplitude’ can be used to describe accurately the chemical reactivity of both molecules and metal surfaces, which is an advantage when studying heterogeneous catalysis.
The work should allow scientists to make a direct evaluation of the bond energy and also reveal new aspects of the chemical interaction, they say.
Read this ‘HOT’ Chemical Science Edge Article:
Bond-Energy Decoupling: Principle and Application to Heterogeneous
Catalysis Bing Huang , Lin Zhuang , Li Xiao and Juntao Lu
Chem. Sci., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2SC21232C
