Molecular firing range allows surprisingly specific bond breaking

For the first time it has been shown that shooting a complex molecule against a solid surface breaks its bonds selectively.¹ Using a system developed by the University of Oxford’s Stephan Rauschenbach, German and UK researchers fired beams of ions of Reichardt’s dye against a copper crystal. While this flattened all the ions, many remained intact, while the remainder broke apart in just two different ways.