Matt has just co-authored a publication in Journal of the American Chemical Society with the Miller group at UNC resulting from some of his sabbatical work. The paper describes a powerful approach to switchable catalysis, where hydrogen bonding of a pendant crown ether to a bound ammine ligand can serve as a gate to catalysis that opens in the presence of cations that disrupt hydrogen bonding. The situation is analogous to biological systems, but this approach has not previously been demonstrated in synthetic systems. Congrats especially to Sebas, also to other Miller group members for their fantastic work!
Pendent ligands! Very cool stuff.
And some really great Chemdraw figures too.
(personal aside: I sit next to one of the original developers of Chemdraw at work. I’ll have to forward this piece of artwork to him!)