Super-shielded carbene is stable in liquid water
By 
Jamie Durrani2025-05-21T10:08:00
Researchers claim to have validated a decades-old hypothesis formulated by Ronald Breslow by generating a carbene in an aqueous environment
A new ‘super-shielded’ carbene is stable in liquid water solutions. The US team that made the carbene claims that it ‘unambiguously confirms’ that it is possible to generate carbenes in an aqueous environment – validating a hypothesis put forward almost 70 years ago by the famed organic chemist Ronald Breslow.
In the late 1950s, Breslow proposed that vitamin B1 was able to promote various biochemical reactions via the formation of a fleeting carbene species. But this was a controversial idea as carbenes are not generally thought to be compatible with water. While much indirect evidence gathered over the years has led the scientific community to accept Breslow’s hypothesis, until now no carbene had been directly observed in an aqueous solution.