Catalytic Transformation of Lignin (Abu Omar)

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Tue, 03/15/2022 - 10:20
Description

Lignin material from plants may be transformed into useful organic materials.  This LO is part of a special VIPEr collection honoring the 2022 ACS National Award recipients in the field of inorganic chemistry. Mahdi Abu Omar was the recipient of the ACS Award in Green Chemistry for his contributions to fundamental science and technology development for catalytic lignin conversion to renewable chemicals, fuels, and materials following green chemistry and engineering principles. 

Toward the Design of Phosphorescent Emitters of Cyclometalated Earth-Abundant Nickel(II) and Their Supramolecular Study (Yam)

Submitted by Kyle Grice / DePaul University on Tue, 03/08/2022 - 15:15
Description

This LO was created to celebrate Dr. Vivian W.-W. Yam's 2022 ACS Award, the Josef Michl Award in Photochemistry. These questions are written to help guide class discussion about this paper and the complexes in it. This LO would be good for an organometallics class or similar upper-division inorganic chemistry class. 

Reversible, Metal-Free Hydrogen Activation (Stephan)

Submitted by Todsapon T. / University of Evansville on Tue, 03/01/2022 - 16:35
Description

This LO discuss various aspects of a reversible hydrogen activation by a metal-free phosphonium-borate compound.  Attentions are paid to the specific and usual reaction between highly steric phosphine and borane reactants to form a zwitterionic phosphonium borate product.  NMR spectroscopy, kinetics and thermodynamics of the hydrogen activation with the phosphonium borate product are also discussed.  The original work was published in Science by Douglas W. Stephan and co-workers.

VIPEr nanoCHAt : NeWBiEs Spring 2022 Learning Objects

This collection accompanies the IONiC VIPEr nanoCHAt video series NeWBiEs, recorded in Spring 2022. This series is comprised of weekly conversations with two IONiC members, Wes Farrell and Shirley Lin from the US Naval Academy, as they taught a foundation-level inorganic chemistry course for the first time. The LOs discussed in the videos are included in this collection.

Shirley Lin / United States Naval Academy Wed, 02/02/2022 - 18:07

Efficient Hydrogenation of Ketones Catalyzed by an Iron Pincer Complex

Submitted by Todsapon T. / University of Evansville on Tue, 11/23/2021 - 11:40
Description

This literature discussion involves various aspect of organometallic chemistry ranging from synthesis, reactions, symmetry, NMR and IR spectroscopy of organometallic compounds as well as catalysis.

Students are asked to read the article published in Angewandte Chime, and answer the questions from the worksheet. Students later discuss their answers with the entire class.

Tanabe Sugano Creative Exercise

Submitted by Janet / Kennesaw State University on Mon, 09/20/2021 - 12:56
Description

Students are asked to provide correct, distinct, and relevant statements about a prompt which includes a coordination complex formula and a Tanabe Sugano diagram. If assigned as an in-class activity, 10 statements meeting the above criteria receive full credit.

An editable Review Jeopardy game via a Macro Powerpoint
Description

In searching for a way to review topics before exams, I was informed about this powerpoint template which is macro'd to be operated as a realistic Jeopardy game. The site for the original author of the macro is:

https://sites.google.com/site/dufmedical/jeopardy

(Jeopardy for PowerPoint by Kevin R. Dufendach is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.)

Paul Smith / Valparaiso University Wed, 08/04/2021 - 23:17

Activation of carbon dioxide by zirconium amides

Submitted by Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College on Tue, 06/08/2021 - 14:48
Description

The O'Hare group has studied complexes of the permethylpentalene ligand, and recently reported the reaction of a zirconium complex of this ligand with CO2 to form the carbamate. A series of three different complexes were prepared, each with slightly different products upon reaction with CO2, illustrating subtle differences in reactivity based on either sterics or electronics. To further tangle the web, entropic and enthalpic considerations can also be considered. 

Photochemical Reactions of Copper (II) Carboxylate Artist Pigments

Submitted by Hilary Eppley / DePauw University on Thu, 05/20/2021 - 09:57
Description

This literature discussion shows how serious inorganic chemistry topics can related to cultural heritage problems.  The paper is pretty dense in EPR and UV/Vis spectroscopy, but the questions don't go in super great depth on those topics instead focusing on the problem, the main findings, structures and the experiment design, with some additional questions about the spectroscopy.