Tiny ‘flasks’ speed up chemical reactionsSelf-assembling nanosphere clusters may

Tiny ‘flasks’ speed up chemical reactionsSelf-assembling nanosphere clusters may improve everything from drug synthesis to drug deliveryMiniature self-assembling “flasks” created at the Weizmann Institute may prove a useful tool in research and industry. The nanoflasks, which have a span of several nanometers, or millionths of a millimeter, can accelerate chemical reactions for research. In the future, they might facilitate the manufacture of various industrial materials and perhaps even serve as vehicles for drug delivery.Dr. Rafal Klajn of the Weizmann Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department and his team were originally studying the light-induced self-assembly of nanoparticles. They were employing a method earlier developed by Klajn in which inorganic nanoparticles are coated in a single layer of organic molecules that change their configuration when exposed to light; these alter the properties of the nanoparticles such that they self-assemble into crystalline clusters. When spherical nanoparticles of gold or other materials self-assembled into a cluster, empty spaces formed between them, like those between oranges packed in a case. Klajn and his team members realized that the empty spaces sometimes trapped water molecules, which led them to suggest that they could also trap “guest” molecules of other materials and function as tiny flasks for chemical reactions. A cluster of a million nanoparticles would contain a million such nanoflasks.As reported in Nature Nanotechnology, when the scientists trapped molecules that tend to react with one another inside the nanoflasks, they found that the chemical reaction ran a hundred times faster than the same reaction taking place in solution. Being confined inside the nanoflasks greatly increased the concentration of the molecules and organized them in a way that caused them to react more readily. Enzymes speed up chemical reactions in a similar manner – by confining the reacting molecules within a pocket.Read more. -- source link

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