Lots of new crystal structures

The hard work of CHEM 352 students last term has come to fruition! The awesome group of 9 lab students made and crystallized tons of new complexes as part of three different inorganic experiments, and now three of these structures have been published (LINK TO PAPER) in Acta Crystallographica. This work follows up on several years of experiments by CHEM 352 students exploring solid-state characteristics of Mo(II) acetyl complexes, extending to a series of propionyl complexes featuring differently substituted triarylphosphine ligands. Congrats to Margaret Ball ’21, Alison Block ’22, Ben Brewster ’22, LouLou Ferrer ’22, Helen Jin-Lee ’23, Colby King ’22, Jamie North ’21, Inger Shelton ’22, and David Wilson ’22 for their excellent work!

Bimetallic small-molecule reductions

We are so excited that our recent work, showing a really cool and distinct approach to reducing small molecules like CO2 and ethylene, has been published in Angewandte Chemie! These findings show a really fascinating way that silylene ligands can template multimetallic redox reactions, and we think they may be extended more broadly to a variety of 3d metals. Congrats to students Jim Zhang ’18, Jason Ma ’18, and Anna Conley ’20 as well as collaborators Prof. Dani Kohen and Prof. Daron Janzen for their awesome work!!

New Paper

We just published a paper with collaborators at Davidson College in Acta Crystallographica.  The manuscript examines differences between related molybdenum acetyl structures featuring the PTA ligand and its diaceylated DAPTA variant.  Shout out to Prof. Mitch Anstey for identifying PTA as an interesting target for these studies and special thanks to his students at Davidson for excellent work!

First Crystal Structure!

We’ve collected our first data set on the new diffractometer, a nice bis(dimethylglyoximato)(isobutyl)(pyridyl)cobalt(III) complex grown by students in our CHEM 352 lab.  Take CHEM 352 and you can grow some for yourself!  R1 = 3.01%, wR2 = 7.24% — not too bad for a first crystal.

New Diffractometer!!

We are thrilled to show off the newest addition to our lab, a Bruker Quest ECO single-crystal X-ray diffractometer.  This instrument will provide awesome new capabilities for our work in inorganic synthesis and small-molecule activation, and we are looking forward to new opportunities to incorporate crystallography into CHEM 352 laboratory and outreach activities.  Thanks to the Dreyfus Foundation and Carleton College for their generous support that enabled this purchase!!

Cooperative CO2 Scission Paper is Out!

This one has been a long time coming, but it has been worth the wait!  Check out this fantastic work in Organometallics by Jim Zhang ’18, Teddy Donnell ’17, Paul Peterson ’18, and Mike Trenerry ’18, as well as our awesome collaborators Prof. Buck Taylor (and student Vanessa Eng) and Prof. Daron Janzen.  We provide experimental and computational evidence for silicon-assisted CO2 cleavage by an anomalous insertion mechanism, highlighting another mechanism by which silicon can play a key role in transforming CO2.

Seminar travel

Matt recently made seminar trips to Yale University, MIT, and Princeton University.  What a great chance to share the cool chemistry being explored by Carleton undergrads!  The trips provided a nice opportunity to chat with students and postdocs about careers at PUIs and to catch up with Carleton alumni Kaz Skubi ’11, Anna Brezny ’13, Mia Borden ’13, Joe Boerma ’13, and Paul Peterson ’18 (Paul was a great student host for Matt’s Princeton visit!).  Thanks to Pat Holland, Alex Radosevich, and Paul Chirik for great visits!