Chemical Bonds Destroyed Under Room Conditions

An impressive breakthrough in chemistry was recently achieved at the Cornell University, when researchers learned how to break two of the strongest types of chemical bonds in the world at room temperature and pressure. This is something that has never been done before, and experts say that the innovation could see a lot of research fields and technological processes being revolutionized. These bonds need to be broken so that many types of common industrial compounds can be produced.

According to Technology Review, the breakthrough could be used as a stepping stone for the development of less-energy-intensive processes for the production of nitrogen-containing organic compounds in the near future. “The nitrogen-carbon bond is the backbone of almost all top-selling pharmaceuticals,” CU Professor of Chemistry Paul Chirik explains. He says that some of the most common places where these bonds can be found include most proteins, as well as nylon, fertilizer, and insecticides. Combining carbon and nitrogen is however a very laborious process.

Chemists explain that the two elements require high amounts of energy to be brought together. Ammonia is regularly used as a nitrogen source, which also complicates the process considerably. These bonds can now be produced using carbon monoxide and molecular nitrogen, which makes the process less energy-intensive, and ready to use under room conditions. What the CU team is trying to accomplish is the creation of a production method for breaking nitrogen bonds into organic-nitrogen compounds directly, without turning them into ammonia first.

“People producing organo-nitrogen compounds today have to make ammonia first. [The CU experts] are developing reactions to make nitrogen into organo-nitrogens directly,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Chemistry Professor Christopher Cummins says. American Cyanamid is at this point the only company that produces compounds using this method, but its factory is powered by the Niagara Falls, which is the only way to produce an electrical arc strong enough to break the bonds.