This literature discussion is based on a short JACS communication reporting the first isolable Sc(II) carbonyls (not a typo) and isocyanides.  The paper discusses some standard synthesis and characterization while exploring a more fundamental question regarding why Sc, a d-block metal, is considered a rare-earth and when it stops reacting analogously to the rare-earth metals.  The LO focuses on ye olde carbonyl stretching frequencies and back-bonding and makes a nice follow up to an introduction to that concept.  It tries to make students explicitly connect electron configuration to changes

This literature discussion LO was created for the ACS National Award Winners 2025 collection. Dr. Greg C. Fu for being the recipient of the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis 2025 from the American Chemical Society.

This literature discussion was prepared as part of the 2025 ACS awards collection in honor of Gary J. Schrobilgen, winner of the M. Frederick Hawthorne Award in Main Group Inorganic Chemistry.

This literature discussion introduces students to various tetradentate ligands not commonly seen in textbooks.  Students can apply knowledge of ligand binding to predict coordination geometry while exploring how the 3D nature of more complex ligands can affect their coordination to a metal.

This LO was developed as a review activity for the end of the semester.  Students are required to touch on a wide range of topics including acid-base theories, crystal systems, point groups, the spectrochemical series, and 19F NMR spectroscopy.  A close reading of the paper is required helping to build student comprehension of the literature.

This activity was designed to assess student comprehension of how changes in pi-donation from ligands can affect both crystal field splitting and metal spin states.  The activity requires students to practice electron counting, idealized crystal field splitting, and then apply these concepts to explain the observed change from low to high spin caused by the loss of a proton.