A chiral solvation shell visualized on the molecular-scale level
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Updated: Nov 13, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
Published on: August 18, 2017
Marvin Quack1, Haeri Lee2, Qianqian Yan2
1Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Physical Chemistry I, Universitätsstr. 150, D-44801 Bochum, Germany. karina.morgenstern@rub.de.
Abstract:
The mutual interaction between a solute and its solvent influences the solute's reactivity. Yet, it is challenging to determine a solvation shell of a solute experimentally, partially due to its transient nature and partially because its position within the solvent makes it inaccessible to any imaging technique. We here line out how real-space imaging of the solvation shell of a non-covalent dimer of a pincer complex is accessible by depositing the solvated complex on a surface and imaging it at cryogenic temperature after removing solvent molecules not interacting with the pincer complex. Our study reveals how the solvent chloroform rearranges to chiral ring structures.
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