Some genuinely new chemistry — a triple boron-boron bond has been produced. The compound is stable up to 234C if kept away from air. It’s stabilised by using heterocyclic molecules that are strong Lewis bases to donate an electron pair to each boron atom, giving each boron a full valence shell. It is thought that the new compound may have uses in organic electronic materials. Read more here.
Fluorine is the most electronegative element and so super-reactive. So we’d only expect to find it as a compound. Now some elemental fluorine has been detected in the fluorspar mineral antozonite using 19F NMR spectroscopy. The fuorine is produced in elemental form due to the effect of ionising radiation from very small quantities of uranium in the mineral. Read more here.
We’d all like our mobiles, tablets, etc. to be able to run more applications and consume less power. But there are limited by their RAM. An ingenious solution uses C60 to create a small, high speed transistor. Read more here.
Sounds ideal, something that cleans itself! These researchers have incorporated titanium dioxide in the plastic armrests of garden chairs. When exposed to UV light, they promote the production of free radicals, which kill off fungi, bacteria, etc. Only trouble is, you do need some sunshine…Read more here.
If you get up close to a white dwarf star, weird things happen to molecules. That’s because a white dwarf has a huge magnetic field, which distorts the shape of the electron clouds. It can apparently result in molecules being a lot smaller, and even promote the formation of molecules that don’t otherwise exist, such as diatomic helium. Read more here.