Scientists used a multimodal approach to understand how a catalyst decomposes nerve agents in real-life environments
A team of scientists including researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has studied a catalyst that decomposes nerve agents, eliminating their harmful and lethal effects. The research was published Friday, April 19, in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
“Our work is part of an ongoing, multiagency effort to protect soldiers and civilians from chemical warfare agents (CWAs),” said Anatoly Frenkel, a physicist with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University and the lead author on the paper. “The research requires us to understand molecular interactions on a very small scale, and to develop special characterization methods that are capable of observing those interactions. It is a very complex set of problems that also has a very immediate societal impact.”
>Read more on the National Synchrotron Light Source-II website
Image: Lead author Anatoly Frenkel is shown at NSLS-II’s X-ray Powder Diffraction beamline, where part of the research was conducted.