Chemists succeed in isolating carbon-gold compound of "amazing stability"
Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 07:31
in Physics & Chemistry
With a chemical "trick", scientists at Heidelberg University have succeeded in isolating a stable gold carbene complex. Chemist Prof. Dr. Bernd F. Straub and his team are the first to have created the basis for directly examining the otherwise unstable gold-carbon double bond. Prof. Straub explains that highly reactive gold carbene molecules play an important role in landmark catalysing processes taking place at high speed. The research findings have been published in the German and the international edition of Angewandte Chemie, a journal on applied and fundamental chemistry.