Image of the Month
Rich Whitworth |

Acetylene Selfie
A depiction of the laser-induced electron diffraction imaging of a molecular bond break-up in acetylene. “In our experiment, we took one electron, steered it along a specific path with the laser and scattered it off an isolated molecule to record its diffraction pattern,” says Jens Biegert, co-author of the published paper (1). “Our method has finally achieved the required space and time resolution to take snapshots of molecular dynamics without missing any of its events. We were able to have the first direct visualization of bond cleavage and observation of the proton during its departure from the [C2H2]2+ ion, something that has never seen before.”
Reference 1. B Wolter et al, “Ultrafast electron diffraction imaging of bond breaking in di-ionized acetylene,” Science, 354, 308-312 (2016)
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