How you get the chameleon of the molecules to settle on a particular “look” has been discovered by RUB chemists led by Professor Dominik Marx. The molecule CH5+ is normally not to be described by a single rigid structure, but is dynamically flexible. By means of computer simulations, the team from the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry showed that CH5+ takes on a particular structure once you attach hydrogen molecules. “In this way, we have taken an important step towards understanding experimental vibrational spectra in the future”, says Dominik Marx. The researchers report in the journal “Physical Review Letters”.