Last month, I learned some very cool chemistry in one of my classes, and last week, I visited the Barcelona Olympic Stadium built for the '92 summer games. Since I'm currently studying for my exam while reminiscing about Spain, I thought I could tell you about how the two are (slightly) related!
This very cool chemistry lecture was about catenanes, which are basically two (or more) interlocked rings:
The two interlocked molecules can't be separated unless a bond is broken, much like keys on a key ring-- no matter how you orient your keys, they won't separate from the key ring unless you physically break their 'bond.' Now here's the awesome thing about catenanes-- they can be used to make molecular switches. The rings in a catenane rotate with respect to each other, and this rotation can be detected and controlled. How do we detect it? NMR spectroscopy. How do we control the rotation? Putting in a metal ion! Basically, when a specific metal ion is present, certain bonds form between the ion and the catenane, locking the catenane into a specific form. When the metal ion is removed, the catenane is free to rotate-- the metal ion basically controls whether the molecule is turned ‘on’ or ‘off.’ Still don’t see the relationship with Barcelona?
Well, in 1994, a chemist named Fraser Stoddard decided to make a catenane with not two, not three but.. five interlocked macrocycles! Successfully making this molecule took 14 days, and the resulting mixture contained about 5% of the desired product, so it’s a pretty tedious and long process. Since the catenane was made of 5 interlocking rings, it’s called.. Olympiadane!
It’s very pretty.
The Stoddard lab made Olympiadane just for the heck of it, so it wasn’t really designed for any practical use. The molecule was first proposed back in 1960, but good ole’ van Gulick was met with skepticism, and his paper theorizing linked rings was rejected from journals and eventually dismissed as “not chemistry.” Now, fifty years later, we know that similar catenanes (more practical and easily synthesized ones) are being used to make molecular computers! Take that, van Gulick critics!
So when I visited the beautiful Olympic grounds in Barcelona last week, my first thought was not about sports but.. chemistry!
Embarrassingly nerdy or ridiculously cool? You decide.
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