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Thursday, 21st August 2008 (2448 views)

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has reported on a new gold catalyst which can be used to catalyse hydrocarbon oxidation, using naturally occurring molecular oxygen as the only oxidant.

However, according to Richard Lambert and his colleagues from the University of Cambridge, for it to work the gold catalyst particle cannot be any larger than 2nm in diameter.

Each catalyst consists of 55-atom gold clusters. In the research, oxygen molecules were "absorbed into the gold particles and then dissociated to give single oxygen atoms that initiated the styrene oxidation".

The team behind the discovery said they hoped the gold clusters will be able to provide a route into the synthesis of gold catalysts.

In turn this may have practical applications for synthetic chemistry.

Meanwhile, the RSC also reported that researchers in the US have started human clinical trails on an imaging system which makes cancers glow under infrared lights.

This could help doctors to remove tumours without damaging healthy tissue in the body.

 

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