Nitrogen compounds with surprising structures discovered

Valuable starting points for the design and synthesis of new high-tech materials

06-May-2020 - Nitrides are nitrogen compounds with technologically highly attractive properties. They therefore have the potential for widespread application in microelectronics, optoelectronics, and as ceramic materials. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have now discovered unusual nitrides in ...

Atomic images reveal unusually many neighbors for some oxygen atoms

22-Oct-2019 - The identification of new chemical bonds is crucial for the design of new material structures. A team led by Jani Kotakoski at the University of Vienna and Jannik Meyer at the University of Tübingen has found unexpected new configurations of oxygen and nitrogen in graphene. Direct images of the ...

Researchers discover stable high-energy material

16-Oct-2019 - High-energy materials that can store very large amounts of chemical energy and release it when required are being sought for long-haul space travel worldwide. Nitrogen compounds in which several nitrogen atoms are linked by single bonds possess this ability. These compounds are difficult to ...

Chemists show it's hip to be square

Their synthetic azetidines could help simplify drug design for neurological diseases

13-Aug-2019 - Rice University chemists want to make a point: Nitrogen atoms are for squares. The nitrogens are the point. The squares are the frames that carry them. These molecules are called azetidines, and they can be used as building blocks in drug design. The Rice lab of chemist László Kürti introduced ...

Inert Nitrogen Forced to React with Itself

26-Mar-2019 - Direct coupling of two molecules of nitrogen: chemists from Würzburg and Frankfurt have achieved what was thought to be impossible. This new reaction is reported in Science magazine and opens new possibilities for one of the most inert molecules on earth. Constituting over 78 % of the air we ...

Nitrogen gets in the fast lane for chemical synthesis

Chemists discover way to simplify synthesis of valuable precursor for drugs, other compounds

12-Feb-2019 - Rice University scientists have given organic chemists a boost with their latest discovery of a one-step method to add nitrogen to compounds for drugs, pesticides, fertilizers and other products. Rice synthetic organic chemist László Kürti said the method is a major step forward as it quickens ...

Making ammonia 'greener'

Smaller ammonia processing plants powered by alternative energy

15-Jan-2019 - Ammonia, a compound first synthesized about a century ago, has dozens of modern uses and has become essential in making the fertilizer that now sustains most of our global food production. But while we've been producing ammonia at a large scale since the 1930s, it has been accomplished mainly in ...

Looking at molecules from two sides with table-top femtosecond soft-X-rays

03-Jan-2019 - X-ray spectroscopy provides direct access into the nature of chemical bonds, from which the outcome of chemical reactions can be understood. For this, intense activities both at x-ray source development and implementation of new measurement methods is pursued by key research labs. Researchers at ...

Solving a 75-year-old mystery might provide a new source of farm fertilizer

29-Nov-2018 - The solution to a 75-year-old materials mystery might one day allow farmers in developing nations to produce their own fertilizer on demand, using sunlight and nitrogen from the air. Thanks to a specialized X-ray source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers at the Georgia ...

Nitrogen fixation in ambient conditions

13-Nov-2018 - Abundant in nature (78% of the air we breathe), nitrogen is rarely used in the industrial production of chemicals, with the most important process being the synthesis of ammonia, which is in turn used for the preparation of agricultural fertilizers. Using nitrogen as a raw material ("feedstock") ...