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Carbon bond that uses only one electron seen for first time: ‘It will be in the textbooks’

The fundamental discovery deepens scientists’ understanding of chemical bonding.
  1. Katherine Bourzac

    1. Katherine Bourzac is a freelance journalist in San Francisco, California.

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For a little more than a century, chemists have believed that strong atomic links called covalent bonds are formed when atoms share one or more electron pairs. Now, researchers have made the first observations of single-electron covalent bonds between two carbon atoms.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03138-2

References

  1. Shimajiri, T. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07965-1 (2024).

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