The activity is designed to be a literature discussion based on Nicolai Lehnert's Inorganic Chemistry paper, Mechanism of N-N Bond Formation by Transition Metal-Nitrosyl Complexes: Modeling Flavodiiron Nitric Oxide Reductases. The discussion questions are designed for an advanced level inorganic course.
Inorganic chemists often use IR spectroscopy to evaluate bond order of ligands, and as a means of determining the electronic properties of metal fragments.
In this literature assignment, students are asked to read an article from the primary literature on a binuclear manganese-peroxo complex that is similar to species proposed to be involved in photosynthetic water splitting and DNA biosynthesis. The assignment contains 25 questions that are intended to guide students through the article and help them extract important information about the work. The completed questions are then used as the basis for an in-class discussion of model complexes, which leads to a more advanced discussion on the topic.
Pulsed Gradient Spin Echo (PGSE) DOSY is a NMR technique used for determining the hydrodynamic radius of a molecule in solution by measuring the rate of diffusion. This technique requires a standard, usually tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)silane (TMSS). This activity will cover the basics of how PGSE works and includes built in animations to demonstrate how the nuclear magnetization is affected. Each slide has comments explaining the content for the user's convenience.
This course uses molecular orbital theory to explain the electronic structure and reactivity of inorganic complexes. Topics include symmetry and its applications to bonding and spectroscopy, electronic spectroscopy of transition-metal complexes, mechanisms of substitution and redox processes, organometallic and multinuclear NMR.
Additional notes
I do not require a formal text but George Stanley's organometallic chemistry 'book' on VIPEr is made available to students (the link is found below).
Lithium battery technology is an evolving field as commercial requirements for storage and use of energy demand smaller, safer, more efficient and longer-lasting batteries. Copper ferrite, CuFe2O4, is a promising candidate for application as a high energy electrode material in lithium based batteries. Mechanistic insight on the electrochemical reduction and oxidation processes was gained through the first X-ray absorption spectroscopic study of lithiation and delithiation of CuFe2O4.