This is a literature discussion based on a 2018 Inorganic Chemistry paper from the Lehnert group titled “Mechanism of N–N Bond Formation by Transition Metal–Nitrosyl Complexes: Modeling Flavodiiron Nitric Oxide Reductases“(DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b02333).
The associated paper by Lehnert et al. uses DFT to investigate the reaction mechanism whereby a flavodiiron nitric oxide reductase mimic reduces two NO molecules to N2O. While being a rather long and technical paper, it does include several figures that highlight the reaction profile of the 4-step reaction. This LO is designed to help students learn how to recognize and interpret such diagrams, based on free energy in this case. Furthermore, using a simple form of the Arrhenius equation (eq.
This acitivty is a foundation level discussion of the Nicolai Lehnert paper, "Mechanism of N-N Bond Formation by Transition Metal-Nitrosyl Complexes: Modeling Flavodiiron Nitric Oxide Reductases". Its focus lies in discussing MO theory as it relates to Lewis structures, as well as an analysis of the strucutre of a literature paper.
In honor of Professor Richard Andersen’s 75th birthday, a small group of IONiC leaders submitted a paper to a special issue of
Modern theories of atomic structure and chemical bonding and their applocations to molecular and metallic structures and coordination chemistry.
Topics in inorganic chemistry, including periodicity and descriptive chemistry of the elements, electrochemistry, transition metal coordination chemistry, and the structure and properties of solid state materials. Laboratories emphasize synthesis and characterization of inorganic coordination compounds, electrochemistry, and inorganic materials. This course satisfies the second semester of a one-year General Chemistry requirement for post-graduate Health Professions programs. Prerequisite, 120 or 125. Three hours of lecture and three hours of laboratory.
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).
Students in inorganic chemistry courses are often interested in the colors of transition metal complexes. This in-class activity serves an introduction to reactions of coordination complexes and pushes students to think about the relationship between the color of a complex cation and its structure. Students are provided with pictures of aqueous solutions of two chromium(III) salts [CrCl3*6 H2O and Cr(NO3)3*9 H2O] at two different times and are then asked to explain the changes observed in the solutions.
Inorganic chemists study the entire periodic table (even carbon—as long as it’s bound to a metal!) and are interested in the structure and reactivity of a wide variety of complexes. We will spend the first third of the course learning some “tools” and then will apply them to a variety of current topics in inorganic chemistry (bioinorganic chemistry, solid state materials, catalysis, nuclear chemistry, and more!).