This literature review covers a paper by the Brookhart group in which they describe a very interesting catalytic route for reducing alkyl halides. The paper describes the catalytic mechanism in great detail and shows an unexpected trend in relative reactivities (Br > Cl > I and primary > secondary). One of the primary benefits for using this paper is that it can enable your students to rationalize a mechanism consistent with many different data sets.

This paper is from a Science article from Alan Goldman’s group at Rutgers University. It was one of the literature articles that was assigned during the IONiC VIPEr Workshop in July 2012.  In conjunction with reading the article, workshop participants attended a seminar presented by Alan Goldman on this work.

Searching and reading the literature is an important tool in teaching organometallic chemistry. This overall project focuses on the improving students' writing skills and to begin to think critically about articles in the literature through a series of different writing assignments. This project is used in a semester long course on organometallics and reaction mechanisms. The first assignment (this LO) is a summary, the second is related to the NSF highlight, and the third is a literature critique.

The synthesis of the nitrogen triiodide ammoniate shock-sensitive explosive is a simple laboratory exercise, but it does require a lengthy time for the material to dry before it is active.  This activity uses that time to have students investigate some simple thermodynamics behind their explosive, as well as consult the literature on high energy density materials from the work of Karl O. Christe.

There is also a shorter version of the activity posted as an in-class activity that omits most of the literature investigation.