Chemistry Eur. J. cover for Team Best

In a study which primarily involved measuring and interpreting the IR spectrum of ferrocene (an undergraduate laboratory task in days gone by) Stephen Best, together with researchers in Physics, Swinburne University and the Australian Synchrotron, have identified the spectroscopic signature associated with low-barrier molecular motion and connected this with DFT calculations of the vibrational spectrum of the molecule in its ground and transition state.

The approach involves application of transition state theory and does not rely on the NMR-like rapid exchange formalism which has been the accepted interpretative framework of the last quarter century. The paper can be found online.