Gaining Control discusses the new findings published by Stensitzki et al. in the recent issue of Nature Chemistry with the title: Acceleration of a ground-state reaction by selective femtosecond-infrared-laser-pulse excitation.
We demonstrated the acceleration of thermal driven ground-state reactions by specific excitation with IR light. It was assumed that vibrational excitation cannot speed-up ground-state reactions, because of fast intramolecular energy relaxation. Upon excitation of cyclohexanol we show an acceleration of urethane formation from cyclohexanol and phenylisocyanate. By fs IR pump - fs IR probe experiments the urethane formation was tracked in real-time upon IR excitation. The results open up new ways to manipulate and optimize ground-state reactions. The results were published in Nature Chemistry ( online ).