Wednesday, June 11, 2008

In a recent Angew. Chemie. Int. Ed. Communication, R. B. Gerber and coworker Yifat Miller, in collaboration with experimental group of Ori Cheshnovsky at Tel Aviv University, showed a first direct demonstration of a critical number of solvent water molecules for proton transfer from water to an anion. Specifically, for n ≤ 2 the form (C6H5NH-)· (H2O) n, is more stable. For n ≥ 3 the acidity of water become sufficient for proton transfer and the stable species is (C6H5NH2)· (OH-)· (H2O) n-1. This work was done in the framework of the AirUCI projects.