RUB researchers unmask Janus-faced nature of mechanical
forces with the Jülich supercomputer
Nature Chemistry: reaction speed does not always increase in
proportion to the applied force
The harder you pull, the quicker it goes. At least, that
used to be the rule in mechanochemistry, a method that researchers apply to set
chemical reactions in motion by means of mechanical forces. However, as
chemists led by Professor Dominik Marx, Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at the
Ruhr-Universität Bochum now report in the journal “Nature Chemistry”, more
force cannot in fact be translated one to one into a faster reaction. With
complex molecular dynamic simulations on the Jülich supercomputer “JUQUEEN”
they unmasked the Janus-faced nature of mechanochemistry. Up to a certain
force, the reaction rate increases in proportion to the force. If this
threshold is exceeded, greater mechanical forces speed up the reaction to a
much lesser extent.