American, two Japanese share 2010 chemistry Nobel for tool to create sophisticated chemicals

American, two Japanese share 2010 chemistry Nobel for tool to create sophisticated chemicals

2010-10-06 17:17:42 GMT+7 (ICT)

STOCKHOLM (BNO NEWS) -- One American and two Japanese were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for developing a tool that allows chemists to create sophisticated chemicals as complex as those created by nature itself.

American Richard Heck and Japense researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki shared this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was announced during a ceremony in Stockholm. They will be given 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.5 million) which is to be shared equally.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the trio was awarded the honorable prize for developing palladium-catalyzed cross coupling, a chemical tool which has vastly improved the possibilities for chemists to create extremely sophisticated chemicals. For example, the Academy said, the tool has developed carbon-based molecules that are as complex as those created by nature itself.

Carbon-based (organic) chemistry is the basis of life and is responsible for numerous natural phenomena. This includes color in flowers, snake poison and bacteria killing substances such as penicillin. Organic chemistry has allowed man to build on nature's chemistry, making use of carbon's ability to provide a stable skeleton for functional molecules. This has given mankind new medicines and revolutionary materials such as plastics.

In order to create these complex chemicals, chemists need to be able to join carbon atoms together. However, carbon is stable and carbon atoms do not easily react with one another. The first methods used by chemists to bind carbon atoms together were therefore based upon various techniques for rendering carbon more reactive. Such methods worked when creating simple molecules, but when synthesizing more complex molecules chemists ended up with too many unwanted by-products in their test tubes.

Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling solved that problem and provided chemists with a more precise and efficient tool to work with. In the Heck reaction, Negishi reaction and Suzuki reaction, carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, whereupon their proximity to one another kick-starts the chemical reaction.

Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling is used in research worldwide, as well as in the commercial production of for example pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry.

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