Article published by Kathy Wu and Chloe Miossec
Two PhD students in the Condensed Matter Physics cluster, Kathy Wu and Chloe Miossec, along with their supervisor Dr Brianna Heazlewood, recently had a ‘Highlight’ article published in the journal Chemical Communications.
The manuscript, entitled “Low-temperature reaction dynamics of paramagnetic species in the gas phase”, has been selected as a ‘HOT’ article by the journal Editors.
The article focuses on radicals, which are atoms or molecules with an unpaired electron. Radicals are abundant in gas-phase environments such as the upper atmosphere and interstellar space, as they are readily formed by UV radiation. Due to their highly reactive nature, radicals dominate much of the chemistry that takes place in Earth’s atmosphere and in interstellar space. Understanding how radicals react is therefore essential for the development of accurate models of these important environments. Thanks to advances in a number of experimental techniques, and the development of new methods to manipulate radicals using external magnetic fields, radical reaction processes can now be studied with ever-improving precision and control.
The Chem. Comm. Highlight article brings together the most exciting recent developments in the study of radical reaction dynamics. The focus is on low-temperature reactive collisions involving neutral radical species, where the reaction parameters are controlled. With quantum features now observed in a number of different systems, the interesting insights that have been uncovered to date are discussed, and the future prospects of the field are identified.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CC06394D