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REACTION DYNAMICS

Magnetic control of a reaction path

Nature Chemistry volume 10, pages 1177–1179 (2018)Cite this article

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Magnetic or electric fields have long been used to align or orient atomic or molecular species in a molecular beam. Now, experiments in a merged beam apparatus show that an external magnetic field can be used to favour one particular reaction path.

Controlling the course of a chemical reaction to preferentially obtain a desired product is a long-standing goal for chemists. Many strategies have been explored that can be classified as ‘chemical’ — including all kinds of catalysis — or ‘physical’ — acting on physical parameters such as temperature (or collision energy), pressure, light and so on. Nowadays, the influence on reactivity of microscopic physical quantities, such as linear or angular momenta, can be studied: this is the field of chemical reaction dynamics. Writing in Nature Chemistry, Andreas Osterwalder and co-workers1 have demonstrated that controlling the orientation in space of reactants (specifically in this case the orientation of their orbitals) with external fields enables the outcome of the reaction to be controlled.

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Fig. 1: Schematic view of the competing reaction paths.

References

  1. Gordon, S. D. et al. Nat. Chem. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0152-2 (2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, ISM, UMR, Talence, France

    Astrid Bergeat & Christian Naulin

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  1. Astrid Bergeat
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  2. Christian Naulin
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Correspondence to Astrid Bergeat or Christian Naulin.

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Bergeat, A., Naulin, C. Magnetic control of a reaction path. Nature Chem 10, 1177–1179 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0177-6

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