Mirrors in the dark enable chemical control

Chemists in France have changed how a molecule reacts using little more than a carefully spaced pair of mirrors. They flow a silane derivative solution through a dark optical cavity where electromagnetic fluctuations couple with its vibrations, altering which of two bonds a fluoride ion prefers to cleave. ‘You can just make a microfluidic system and you pass the solution between the mirrors and the reactivity changes,’ the University of Strasbourg’s Thomas Ebbesen tells Chemistry World. ‘There’s never been any approach similar to this.’