A chemical compound consisting of two naphthalene molecules bonded together.
From 'bi-' (two) + 'naphthalene' + '-yl' (a chemistry suffix indicating a radical or group). Naphthalene comes from the Arabic 'naft' meaning petroleum. The compound was named by chemists to indicate its structure: two naphthalene units joined together.
Binaphthyl is the building block for some of the most beautiful and useful chiral compounds in chemistry—materials so sophisticated they can distinguish between left-handed and right-handed molecules. These compounds won a Nobel Prize because they enabled scientists to build medicines that work on only one 'handedness' of disease.
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