Adventures in Chemistry at Durham University

对冒险科学的定义尤其困难。它很可能会产生一些奇妙的新结果，但同时它也很可能不起作用。我们将尝试三个不同的项目：项目1：用流式细胞术对碳纳米管进行分类碳纳米管非常小/大约是人类头发厚度的5万倍。它们是只由碳原子制成的中空圆柱体，看起来像卷起的铁丝网。有时它们的行为像金属一样导电，有时它们的行为像晶体管这样的电子元件。在未来，我们也许能够制造电子系统，其中所有的部件，从电线到晶体管，都是由碳制成的。真正的优势是，这些新的碳系统可以比目前由硅制成的现有电子系统更快、更小。问题是，当碳纳米管被制备时，这种材料含有金属颗粒和晶体管状颗粒的混合物，这些颗粒几乎不可能分离。我们将使用一台机器，在纳米管流经探测器时观察它们，并根据这些特性将它们分类到不同的容器中。一旦我们分离了这些粒子，我们希望能够创造一种新型的碳基电子。项目2：超冷分子的新来源量子计算机利用原子和分子的力量来执行存储和处理任务，并有可能比任何基于硅的计算机执行某些计算的速度快数十亿倍。关键成分是量子物质，它是通过将分子冷却到超低温而形成的。分子玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体(MBECs)，其中的分子被冷却到这些非常低的温度，以前从未被制备过。我们将尝试用一种特殊颜色的激光来消除某些分子的运动。我们将通过向一束超音速分子发射激光，并使一些产生的碎片实际上处于零运动状态来做到这一点。项目3链接核磁共振和分子动力学固态分子相互作用，这对物质的物理性质(例如，药物的溶解性和生物活性)有很大的影响。固体核磁共振实验告诉我们，分子正在运动，但它们并没有告诉我们它们是如何运动的。目前，计算机计算没有帮助，因为它们不能处理固体中典型的相对缓慢的过程，这是我们希望解决的问题。

Adventurous science is particularly difficult to define. It is very likely to give some fantastic new result, but at the same time it is also quite likely to not work. We're going to try three different projects:Project 1: Sorting Carbon Nanotubes by Flow Cytometry Carbon nanotubes are extremely small/about 50,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. They are hollow cylinders made only of carbon atoms that look like rolled up sheets of 'chicken wire'. Sometimes they behave like metals and conduct electricity, other times they behave like electronic components such as transistors. In future we may be able to make electronic systems where all the components, from wires to transistors, are made from carbon. The real advantage is that these new carbon systems could be much faster and smaller than existing electronic systems that are currently made from silicon. The problem is that when carbon nanotubes are prepared the material contains a mixture of metallic and transistor-like particles which are virtually impossible to separate. We are going to use a machine that looks at nanotubes as they flow past a detector and depending on those properties the machine will sort them into different containers. Once we have separated these particles we hope to be able to create a new type of carbon-based electronics.Project 2: A New Source for Ultra-Cold Molecules Quantum computers harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks and have the potential to perform certain calculations billions of times faster than any silicon-based computer. The critical ingredient is quantum matter which is made by cooling molecules to ultra-cold temperatures. Molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (MBECs), where molecules have been cooled to these very low temperatures have never been prepared before. We will try to shoot dead the motions of certain molecules using a laser of a particular colour. We shall do this is by firing the laser into a beam of supersonic molecules and leave some of the resulting fragments with effectively zero motion. Project 3 Link NMR and Molecular Dynamics Molecules in the solid state interact with each other and this has a great influence on the physical properties of the substance (e.g. the solubility and hence biological activity of drugs). Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments tell us that molecules are in motion, but they do not tell us about how they move. At present computer calculations do not help because they cannot cope with the relatively slow processes that are typical for solids, and this is the problem that we wish to solve.