In a recent Science paper the Gaunt group reports facile access to β-lactams via palladium-catalyzed coupling of aliphatic amines and carbon monoxide. The scope of the reaction is remarkably broad; over 40 substrates are illustrated, bearing a...
A spin forbidden reaction occurs with a change of the total electronic spin from reactants to products. The mechanistic study is therefore not trivial, since the reaction does not occur on a single adiabatic potential...
In a recent study, the interaction of various methylaluminoxane (MAO) models on the (110) MgCl2 surface were studied with dispersion corrected DFT (revPBE-D3) in ADF. MAO activates the metallocene catalyst, but the structure(s) of MAO are...
Homogeneous gold catalysis has reached an extraordinary level of popularity within organic synthesis as a fundamental tool in the nucleophilic reactions of isolated π-systems, C-H activation, cross-couplings, photocatalysis and enantioselective transformations. Together with the ligand...
X-ray spectroscopy has become a commonly used tool to probe to structure of transition metal complexes, allowing for element-specific measurements. Conventional X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) masurement transmission like UV-Vis, however this methodology is subject to...
Oxidative addition and reductive elimination reactions of small molecules possessing high-order bonds (e.g. N2, O2, NO+) is of fundamental interest in transition metal chemistry. As a means to study the mechanism and intermediates of such...
In two recent combined experimental and computational studies, the optimal cage for each endohedral metallofullerene within the families Ti@C2n and Ca@C2n has been identified and key aspects of the intriguing growth mechanisms of fullerenes were unravelled....
Methylaluminoxane (MAO) is one of the most commonly utilized co-catalysts in the single-site production of polyolefins catalyzed by metallocenes. However, its exact structure has eluded experimental characterization because of the dynamic equilibrium between various species...
In two recent papers, researchers from Trieste and Pisa studied the optical properties of silver and gold nanoparticles. The fundamental study on silver nanoshells showed that plasmonic features emerge at shells as small as 92 atoms....
Metallic glasses are still poorly understood, especially the lack of long-range order. In a bottom-up approach, researchers from the Colorado School of Mines have studied the chemical interactions between clusters underlying the acrystalline behavior of...