Chicken wire (chemistry)
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In chemistry, the term chicken wire is used in different contexts. Most of them relate to the similarity of the regular hexagonal (honeycomb-like) patterns found in certain chemical compounds to the mesh structure commonly seen in real chicken wire.
Examples
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or graphenesâincluding fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphiteâhave a hexagonal structure that is often described as chicken wire-like.[1][2][3]
Hexagonal molecular structures
A hexagonal structure that is often described as chicken wire-like can also be found in other types of chemical compounds such as:
- Non-aromatic polycyclic hydrocarbons, e.g. steroids like cholesterol[4]
- Flat hexagonal hydrogen bonded trimesic acid (benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylic acid),[5] boric acid, or melamine-cyanuric acid complexes[6]
- Interwoven molecule chains in the inorganic polymer NaAuS[7]
- Complexes of the protein clathrin[8]
Additional information
Bond line notation
The skeletal formula is a method to draw structural formulas of organic compounds where lines represent the chemical bonds and the vertices represent implicit carbon atoms.[9] This notation is sometimes called chicken wire notation by a Stanford professor.[10][11][12]
Chemical joke
It is an old joke[dubious â discuss] in chemistry to draw a polycyclic hexagonal chemical structure and call this fictional compound chickenwire.[citation needed] By adding one or two simple chemical groups to this skeleton, the compound can then be named following the official chemical naming convention. An example is 1,2-Dimethyl-chickenwire in a cartoon by Nick D. Kim.
Surface plots
In computational chemistry a chicken wire model or chicken wire surface plot is a way to visualize molecular models by drawing the polygon mesh of their surface (defined e.g. as the van der Waals radius or a certain electron density).[citation needed]