A Korean research team has become the first to measure molecular structure changes in a transition state lasting less than a femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) using spectroscopic techniques.
On Tuesday, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced that Professor Kim Sang Kyu’s team from the Department of Chemistry experimentally identified the transition state structure in chemical reactions.
Since the transition state exists for a time shorter than a femtosecond, directly observing it experimentally has always been extremely challenging.
However, the team used advanced spectroscopic methods to accurately measure structural changes in molecules as they approached the transition state.
The research also revealed a strong correlation between molecular structure and chemical reactivity, evidenced by dramatic changes in reaction rates corresponding to the precisely measured structural changes of the transition state.
Kim stated that this is the first time the rapidly changing molecular structure near the transition state in complex chemical reactions has been revealed through spectroscopy and reaction kinetics techniques. He added that they anticipate this breakthrough will catalyze numerous theoretical and experimental studies. Understanding the transition state structure provides crucial insights for designing highly efficient catalysts capable of selectively accelerating specific chemical reactions.
The study, funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Mid-Career Research Program and the Basic Science 4.0 Priority Research Center (Natural Science Research Institute), was published in Nature Communications last month.