Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

Scientists from the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of Czech Academy of Sciences observed a chemical transformation of individual molecules on silver surface and demonstrated chirality transfer during the reaction. They employed the latest advances of scanning probe microscopy, which allows scientists to determine the chemical bond between individual atoms within molecules and thus determine their molecular structure and the chirality. The results were published in the prestigious journal Nature Chemistry.

A group of researchers from the Institute of Physics, together with an international team, studied the dynamics of water molecules in beryl crystals. As reported in their recent article in Nature Communications, they succeeded in proving for the first time that, at low temperatures, these localized water molecules tend to align, exhibiting so-called incipient ferroelectricity.