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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Chem. 2014 Nov 2;6(12):1044–1048. doi: 10.1038/nchem.2099

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Timeline of a nanoreactor simulation trajectory (movie clip in Supplementary Video 1). Top: Molecular size distribution as a function of simulation time. Left: Simulation begins with a collection of acetylene molecules (C = teal, H = white). New molecules are automatically highlighted with molecule-specific colors to indicate observed reactivity. Middle: Simple products appear first, including short polymeric species (green, yellow) as well as ethylene (orange) and cyclopropene (violet). Right: At longer simulation times the molecular size distribution becomes considerably wider; more than half of the atoms form a large molecule containing multiple aromatic rings (red). A long-lived, inert benzene molecule is also formed (gold, top right).