This activity leads students through the synthesis of compound nanoparticles and examines how key physical properties such as band gap vary with particle size. Prior to doing this, students should have some exposure to the structure of solids, band theory, and band gap as a periodic property (see, for example, Lisensky, et al. J Chem.
In this lab experiment, students use sol-gel chemistry to prepare silica gel monoliths from tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS). Carrying out the hydrolysis and condensation under acid-catalyzed vs.
This is how I always end my organometallics unit in my advanced inorganic chemistry class. The students have already learned electron counting, the major reaction types (oxidative addition (OA), reductive elimination (RE), 1,1- and 1,2-insertion, β-hydrogen elimination, and [2+2] cycloadditions), and have gone through naming elementary steps in class for some classic catalytic cycles (hydrogenation with Wilkinson's catalyst and the Monsanto acetic acid process).
In this open-ended activity, students design crystallizations to can see who can grow the biggest crystals of their colorful products. This addition is something that I add to the standard M(acac)3 syntheses that many of us do as an introductory lab in an upper level course or as a final lab in an introductory type course. Syntheses of the M(acac)3 starting materials are available in most published inorganic laboratory manuals.