An introduction to modern inorganic chemistry, including a description of transition- metal complexes and their role as catalysts, and a survey of the reactivity of selected elements of the main group. Three-hour lecture, three-hour laboratory
This is the full literature discussion based on a communicaiton (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 9278). This paper describes a redox-switch yttrium catalyst that is an active catalyst for the polymerization of L-lactide in the reduced form and inactive in the oxidized form. The catalyst contains a ferrocene-based ligand that serves as the redox active site in the catalyst. This full literature discussion is an extension of the one figure literature discussion that is listed below.
This is what I hope will be a new classification of learning object called a one figure learning object (1FLO). The purpose is to take a single figure from a paper and present students with a series of questions related to interpreting the figure. This literature discussion is based on a paper (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 9278) from Paula Diaconescu's lab in which a yttrium polymerization catalyst with a ferrocene-based ligand can effectively be rendered active or inactive depeneding on the valence state of the ligand.
This Guided Literature Discussion was assigned as a course project, and is the result of work originated by students Joie Games and Benjamin Melzer. It is based on the article “Next-Generation Water-Soluble Homogeneous Catalysts for Conversion of Glycerol to Lactic Acid” by Matthew Finn, J. August Ridenour, Jacob Heltzel, Christopher Cahill, and Adelina Voutchkova-Kostal in Organometallics 2018 37 (9), 1400-1409.
A study of the chemistry of inorganic compounds, including the principles of covalent and ionic bonding, symmetry, periodic properties, metallic bonding, acid-base theories, coordination chemistry, inorganic reaction mechanisms, and selected topics in descriptive inorganic chemistry. Laboratory work is required.
The application of physio-chemical principles to understanding structure and reactivity in main group and transition elements. Valence Bond, Crystal Field, VSEPR, and LCAO-MO will be applied to describe the bonding in coordination compounds. Organometallic and bio-inorganic chemistry will be treated, as will boranes, cluster and ring systems, and inorganic polymers. The laboratory will involve both synthetic and analytic techniques and interpretation of results.
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.
Modern theories of atomic structure and chemical bonding and their applocations to molecular and metallic structures and coordination chemistry.