Meet the molecule created to honor the Olympics | International

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How was Olympia created?Paris 2024 Olympic Games

If there is a symbol that can distinguish Olympic Games They are its characteristic interlocking rings. Created in 1913, the logo represents the union of five continents and the pursuit of excellence of athletes who compete every four years in different disciplines.

To pay homage to the iconic Olympic rings, a group of scientists took on the challenge of creating a molecule shaped like them. “Olimpicene”, a carbon-based organic molecule with a benzene ring.

It is a molecule just one billionth of a meter in diameter, or about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. Its creation began in 2010, when researchers conceived the idea as a way to celebrate the 2012 London Olympics.

How was Olympia created?

Graham Richards, former head of Oxford University’s chemistry department and a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry council, studied a molecule called pentacene created by researchers at the University of Warwick.

Pentacene is made from Five hexagonal rings Richards saw a resemblance to the Olympic rings.

“I was at a committee meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry and we were trying to think about what we could do to mark the Olympics,” Professor Richards explained in an interview with BBC News. “It occurred to me that the molecule I had drawn (pentacene) looked a lot like the Olympic rings, but no one had ever done that before.”

Olimpicene: Synthesized by the University of Warwick, although the compound was originally conceived by chemist Graham Richards in 2010 during the 2012 London Olympics, its structure, in fact, mimics the famous Olympic rings. pic.twitter.com/eS4lWarIPH

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This is how Anish Mistry and David Fox from the University of Warwick took on the task of developing a molecular chemistry recipe and applying smart synthetic organic chemistry to engineer olympienes.

Dr Fox said: “Beyond the scientific challenges of creating olympene in the lab, there are some compelling practical reasons to study molecules like this.”

The first insights into the molecular structure were obtained using scanning tunnelling microscopy, in collaboration with Warwick scientists Giovanni Costantini and Ben Moreton.

The molecule resembles the Olympic rings.

The images, processed using non-contact atomic force microscopy by the IBM Research Center Nanosystems Physics Group, then revealed in detail the olympicene molecule, which is just 1.2 nanometers wide.

“There could be commercial applications for molecules of this nature, but I think most importantly we want to awaken interest in chemistry sparked by the association with the Olympics,” Richards said.

According to Dr Fox, the compound is related to graphene and is one of a series of related compounds that may have interesting electronic and optical properties, so it is considered a great molecule when considering the practical applications of such molecules, including the potential for next-generation solar cells and high-tech lighting sources such as LEDs.