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Boy Scouts, sailors, and Mother Nature aren’t the only ones who can make fancy knots. Chemists in Ireland and Finland have figured out how to synthesize a pentafoil, a “knot” that is composed of 160 atoms and has five crossing points.
Alexandra Witze reports for Science News:
The molecule’s design… is the most complex knot synthesized from building blocks other than DNA. Knowing how to make a pentafoil, its discoverers say, could lead to ways to make materials lighter, stronger or more flexible than before.
Witze writes that understanding these bigger knots could also help scientists better understand naturally knotted materials, such as rubber. The knots in rubber’s polymer chains give the material its characteristic stretchiness.
The researchers note in their journal article that knots have biological importance and have been the targets for chemical synthesis for the past two decades. Other scientists made a trefoil molecule — with three points crossing — in 1989.
Witze explains the chemistry of the pentafoil:
The scientists took negatively charged chloride ions and added ingredients such as positively charged iron ions and long chains of carbon and other atoms, then chemically programmed the whole thing to assemble itself. Five of the chains looped over one another and hooked up, along with five irons, with each chloride to create the pentafoil.
The researchers characterized the structure and topology of the knot with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and X-ray crystallography.
Team leader David, a chemistry professor at the University of Edinburgh in Ireland, told Witze that the molecule’s shape is only one of its interesting features. He said that because the molecule likes to keep a chloride ion in the pocket that forms inside the molecule, it could be developed into a sensor to help detect chlorine in its surroundings.
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