The second in a series on teaching advanced topics to undergraduates, the SLiThEr focuses on organoMetallic chemistry. While the primary framework for the discussion is my senior level course, there is plenty of great content from the live participants.
This collection of learning objects was created to celebrate the National ACS Award Winners 2023 who are members of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry. The list of award winners is shown below.
One thousand interactive organometallic and coordination complexes have been selected and prepared for practice and discovery in electron counting problems. The structures can be displayed and manipulated without requiring software installation using a web browser with JavaScript and JSmol.
In SLiThEr #39 Chip Nataro (Lafayette University) introduces us to the discussion LOs he uses in his senior-level inorganic course and the topics covered.
This paper describes the use of a catalytic nickel system for the hydrodefluorination of aryl amides. While organofluorine compounds are extremely useful because of their unique properties, there are growing concerns about the impact of these compounds on the environment. Carbon-fluorine bonds are extremely strong, and so getting them to react is a significant challenge for chemists.
This paper describes work from the Milstein group in which ruthenium catalysts with pincer ligands are used to depolymerize nylons by breaking the C-N bond and hydrogenating the resulting products to amines and alcohols. Waste plastic is a serious environmental concern that needs a solution. Organometallic chemists put significant effort into finding ways to convert monomers into polymers, and now we must figure out ways to do the reverse.
Descriptive chemistry of the main group elements with some emphasis on the non-metals. Transition metal compounds: aspects of bonding, spectra, and reactivity; complexes of n-acceptor ligands; organometallic compounds and their role in catalysis; metals in biological systems; preparative, analytical, and instrumental techniques.
From the course catalog: The chemistry of the Main Group elements and the transition metals are studied with emphasis on the properties, structures, and reactivities of these elements and their compounds.
Syllabus for Inorganic Chemistry lecture taught in Spring 2022.