Surprise as electric fields found to cleave bond homolytically
Study also uncovers that the reaction rate in a field increases linearly with the solvent dielectric constant
Researchers in the US have performed an electric field-driven chemical reaction in bulk solution. It is the first study to quantify chemical rate enhancement by an external electric field and paves the way for chemical reactions that no longer require chemical reagents or harsh conditions to drive them. ‘If you had asked me when we had written our proposal for our [work], I would’ve said that these are two things that we won’t observe, yet here we are,’ says Latha Venkataraman, who led the work.