This article provides an introduction to thermoelectric materials and applications for space, highlighting a complex Zintl phase, Yb14-xCexMnySb11. Yb14MnSb11 is a semiconductor that can be substituted with Ce to change the number of carriers in the material and thereby enhance the transport properties.
This LO was created to celebrate Dr. Vivian W.-W. Yam's 2022 ACS Award, the Josef Michl Award in Photochemistry. These questions are written to help guide class discussion about this paper and the complexes in it. This LO would be good for an organometallics class or similar upper-division inorganic chemistry class.
This literature discussion focuses on the synthesis, characterization, and polymerization behavior of non-cyclopentadienyl-based Group 4 catalysts for the polymerization of ethylene/1-octene and propylene.
This LO is part of a special VIPEr collection honoring the 2022 ACS National Award recipients in the field of inorganic chemistry. Jerzy Klosin was the recipient of the ACS Award in Industrial Chemistry for the development of versatile homogeneous catalysts for the production of a wide range of polymer-based materials on a large industrial scale.
The literature discussion is based on a manuscript by Gunnoe and coworkers (ACS Catal. 2021, 11, 5688-5702. DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.1c01203). The paper presents mechanistic studies of catalytic oxidative conversion of arenes and olefins to alkenyl arenes with a focus on styrene production.
This LO discuss various aspects of a reversible hydrogen activation by a metal-free phosphonium-borate compound. Attentions are paid to the specific and usual reaction between highly steric phosphine and borane reactants to form a zwitterionic phosphonium borate product. NMR spectroscopy, kinetics and thermodynamics of the hydrogen activation with the phosphonium borate product are also discussed. The original work was published in Science by Douglas W. Stephan and co-workers.
This website displays interactive models of the unit cell contents of simple cubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, and hexagonal close-packed structures, in addition to several simple ionic compounds. Relationships between the close-packed atomic layers, the unit cell contents, and the structures of related ionic materials are highlighted.
This activity was created to extend the "First Day Review of Atomic Orbitals" LO to take up a full class period. The first part of the activity is likely familiar to many VIPER users, asking students to brainstorm and review key concepts related to atomic orbitals. (The author participated in this very activity as a student circa 2010!) The second part of this LO is new and leads students on a guided tour of the Orbitron website to review or discover the shapes of atomic orbitals and their nodal properties.
This spreadsheet uses the Eyring equation to draw a connection between activation barriers and the timescale of a reaction. Students input a free energy of activation and can quickly see how long a reaction will take at varying temperatures. This has been particularly useful in computational sections of literature articles that investigate possible mechanistic pathways.
This collection accompanies the IONiC VIPEr nanoCHAt video series NeWBiEs, recorded in Spring 2022. This series is comprised of weekly conversations with two IONiC members, Wes Farrell and Shirley Lin from the US Naval Academy, as they taught a foundation-level inorganic chemistry course for the first time. The LOs discussed in the videos are included in this collection.
Syllabus: https://www.luther.edu/mertzecl/courses/chem372/
Chemistry 372 is a course including molecular and solid-state bonding and structure, molecular symmetry, and coordination and organometallic chemistry.