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 discussion is intended as a brief application of symmetry and ligand coordination to a novel Zr compound. Students apply VSEPR and molecular symmetry to an uncommon organometallic compound, and apply the coordination mode to basic reactivity. It is intended for an in-class activity but could easily be assigned as a short homework assignment.

This Literature Discussion considers the synthesis of the first carbene-bismuthinidene complex by Gilliard and coworkers in 2019. This molecule serves as an illustration of different bonding models, as it can be described by multiple resonance structures invoking fully covalent, zwitterionic, and coordinate/dative bonding forms. Students analyze these resonance structures and their geometrical implications, then compare to the experimental structural evidence to come to a conclusion about which bonding model(s) best describe this molecule!

This is a literature-based end of semester project.  After a semester of introducing literature in the form of typical literature discussions, this assignment is given to small groups.  It may be easily amended or added to.  Each group is provided with a paper and accompanying questions that are similar to the literature discussions they have done over the semester.  They then must use these guiding questions to assemble a presentation to the class.  The topics chosen and the guiding questions are designed to provide students with a taste of the many areas of inorganic chemistry that are no

This LO was inspired by a talk that Megan Fieser gave at the 2024 Organometallic Chemistry Gordon Research Conference. It was an excellent talk with some really interesting chemistry. Wanting something with practical application for my class focused on organometallic chemistry, I looked at one of her 'older' papers and found this really interesting rhodium catalyst. In the main paper for this LO (Mater. Horiz. 2023, 10, 2047), the catalytic dechlorination of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) using a rhodium pincer complex is described.

This article focuses on a theoretical analysis of K-edge X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) of Fe(CO)₅ in the D_3h and C_4v geometries. For the context of a one semester inorganic chemistry / physical inorganic chemistry course, the authors use computational methods and experimental X-ray techniques to generate the XANES spectra of two different geometries of Fe(CO)₅. Densities of states are used to show overlap between specific orbitals (Fe p with C p), indicating pi-backbonding.

This literature discussion learning object describes the isolation and structure of tetrabenzylthorium, a molecule that was synthesized many years ago but was never thoroughly characterized.