This module offers students in an introductory chemistry or foundational inorganic course exposure to recent literature. Students will apply their knowledge of Lewis dot structure theory and basic thermodynamics to compare and contrast bonding in SiO2 and CO2.
This literature discussion is based on a paper describing the ligand-based reductive elimination of a diphosphine from a thorium compound (Organometallics, 2017, ASAP). The thorium compound contains two bidentate NHC ligands providing an opportunity to discuss the coordination of these ligands. The ligand-based reduction is very subtle and would be challenging for students to pick up without some guidance. The compound undergoing reductive elimination also presents an excellent introduction into magnetic nonequivalence and virtual coupling.
This activity includes questions for students to answer to help guide them through the process of peer review. It was designed to assist students in writing peer reviews for research reports written by their classmates, but could be applied to literature articles as well.
This problem set was designed to be an in-class activity for students to practice applying their knowledge of metal-metal bonding (as discussed in the previous lecture) to recently published complexes in the literature. In this activity, complexes from four papers by Christine M. Thomas and coworkers are examined to give students practice in electron counting (CBC method), drawing molecular orbitals, and fundamental organometallic reactions.
This LO is a problem-set-style literature discussion that leads students through a critical analysis of an interesting but flawed paper from the recent chemical literature. Students use the questions to help them work through the paper prior to class, providing plenty of raw material for an in-class discussion about various aspects of the work from a mechanistic organometallic perspective. The questions help students critically analyze substrate tables, spectroscopic data, and computational results from DFT.
This is an in-class exercise developed based on a recent paper in Angewandte Chemie International Edition that reported a crystal structure of "six-coordinate" carbon. We normally think of carbon being four-coordinate at most, but this case has definitive evidence otherwise. However, we can use our inorganic chemistry knowledge to understand the structure and bonding of this molecule and rationalize its stability. Students do a pre-class exercise and then construct the MO of fhe molecule in class together.
This literature discussion is based on a paper describing the nucelophilic attack on a coordinated arene (Organometallics, 2015, 34,
This literature discussion is based on a paper detailing the structure and reactivity of the title compound (Organometallics, 2016, 35,
This literature discussion is based on a short paper describing a series of Group VI metal carbonyl compounds that have pincer ligands (Organometallics, 2016
This is a great new textbook by George Luther III from the University of Delaware. The textbook represents the results of a course he has taught for graduate students in chemical oceanography, geochemistry and related disciplines. It is clear that the point of the book is to provide students with the core material from inorganic chemistry that they will need to explain inorganic processes in the environment.