The miniscule distance of 0.01 angstrom — or 10-12 meters — has helped a young Taiwanese scientist bag the science equivalent of an “Olympic gold medal” in the global race to find the shortest metal-metal bond in chemistry. The feat has also helped Taiwan gain some recognition on the international scientific stage.
The achievement, reported in the renowned magazine Science and the journal Nature, came this year when Tsai Yi-chou (蔡易州), an associate chemistry professor at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), synthesized a stable quintuple-bonded dichromium complex (a molecule that contains two chromium atoms that has five metal-metal bonds between them).
Tsai’s discovery broke a four-decade stagnation in chemistry where scientists were previously only able to make very short quadruple-bonded metal-metal bonds, the National Science Council (NSC) said at a press conference yesterday.
Though the compound has yet to find industrial or commercial application, its academic implications are profound, the NSC said, adding that Tsai’s breakthrough was published this August in Germany’s Angewandte Chemie as well as the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In the past century, scientists had always believed that the more bonds that exist between two atoms, the shorter the bond distance would be, Tsai said.
In 2005, a quintuple-bonded dichromium compound was synthesized by Philip Power and colleagues, but the bond distance was 1.83 angstrom, Tsai said.
“Inorganic chemists have long thought that the fewer ligands on metal atoms, the better [stronger and shorter] a quintuple-bonded compound could be made … However, we made our compound with two or three ligands attached to each of our chromium atoms and the bond distance is 1.74 angstrom,” Tsai said.
Quoting US chemist Klaus Theopold, the record would be very difficult to break, as 1.74 angstrom may very well be the limit for the shortest metal-metal bond, he said.
Though Rhett Kempe, a professor at Germany’s Bayreuth University, had also submitted a quintuple-bonded compound to Angewandte Chemie in August, his chromium-chromium bond was 1.75 angstrom, the NSC said.
“My work focuses on the chemistry of low-valent and low-coordinate [or “coordination unsaturated”] transition metal complexes,” Tsai told reporters.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
ELITE UNIT: President William Lai yesterday praised the National Police Agency’s Special Operations Group after watching it go through assault training and hostage rescue drills The US Navy regularly conducts global war games to develop deterrence strategies against a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, aimed at making the nation “a very difficult target to take,” US Acting Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby said on Wednesday. Testifying before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Kilby said the navy has studied the issue extensively, including routine simulations at the Naval War College. The navy is focused on five key areas: long-range strike capabilities; countering China’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; terminal ship defense; contested logistics; and nontraditional maritime denial tactics, Kilby
RSS