Highlights with ‘inorganic chemistry’

Spin Orbit Coupling effect on spin-forbidden reaction mechanisms

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...

Surface activation of MAO

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...

Counterion effect in NHC-gold(I)-catalyzed alkoxylation

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...

High-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy of iron carbonyl complexes

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...

Intramolecular 6-electron photo-redox reactions

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...

Growth Mechanism of Small Endohedral Metallofullerenes

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....

Insights into the components of MAO mixtures

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...

Optical Properties of Silver and Gold Nanoparticles

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....

Reactive cluster model of metallic glasses

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...

Catalytic oxygenation by Ruthenium Polyoxometalates

The catalytic oxydation of DMSO has been established with ruthenium polyoxometalates (POMs). The catalytic cycle has been revealed through a combination of experiments and theory, with the key intermediate established by relativistic DFT calculations as a POM-dimer...