Carbenes are among the most adaptable building blocks in organic chemistry, but they may also be dangerously hot. Due to their explosivity in the lab, scientists often avoid using these very reactive molecules.
However, in a new study that was just published in the journal Science, researchers from The Ohio State University describe a new, safer method to turn these short-lived, high-energy molecules into much more stable ones.
“Carbenes have an incredible amount of energy in them,” said David Nagib, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. “The value of that is they can do chemistry that you just cannot do any other way.”
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