Submitted by Chip Nataro / Lafayette College on Thu, 01/15/2026 - 14:53
My Notes
Description

This literature discussion comes from a paper in the Turkish Journal of Chemistry (199923, 9-14) https://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/chem/vol23/iss1/2/. In this paper, the authors report spectroscopic data for nine compounds, [M(CO)4(PP)] (M = Cr, Mo or W; PP = dppm, dppe, dppp). This is a very fundamental paper and as such, students are not expected to have had any significant coursework in inorganic chemistry. While not formally presented or required the fundamental ideas of the Covalent Bond Classification method of electron counting are presented. Students are asked to consider potential isomers of these compounds. The bulk of the discussion then focuses on the interpretation of the spectroscopic data. For the IR, group theory is not assumed, but can be applied. The paper only presented 13C and 31P NMR, and so those are the focus of the discussion. In particular, coupling constants, including coupling to low abundance 183W nucleus, are discussed.

Attachment Size
The learning object 26.92 KB
Group 6 carbonyl.pdf 327.41 KB
Learning Goals

Through completing this literature discussion, students will be able to

  • Consider the electron count for 'on time' metals with L-type ligands.
  • Draw potential isomers of [M(CO)4(PP)] compounds.
  • Discuss the bonding in metal carbonyls.
  • Discuss mutlinuclear NMR and coupling constants between different nuclei.
  • Explain the coupling to low-abundance nuclei. 
Implementation Notes

This is a bit of an unusual literature discussion that requires some background information. At the time of writing this, I was preparing to co-teach a CURE with my computational colleague. During the synthesis portion of the lab, students will be preparing compounds that are closely related to those presented in this paper. As a means of an introduction, I wanted students to read something relevant in the literature. Students in this class will range from having never taken an Inorganic course to having taken two Inorganic courses. As such, I could not choose a paper with too much assumed knowledge (hence not asking students to do group theory for example). Looking through the literature, most of these compounds have been known for quite some time. As such, finding papers that contained both multinuclear NMR data and IR data proved to be somewhat challenging. In the CURE, our first means of characterizing products is going to be 31P NMR and so introducing that concept was an absolute must. In addition, the paper had to provide an opportunity to explore a little bit about the bonding in transition metal carbonyls. Given the parameters, I think this paper fits very nicely with my goals.

Time Required
50 minutes
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

We have 16 students in the course and I will be discussing this paper with half of them at a time. Given teaching load constraints, this is the first and very likely last iteration of this CURE, so it is unlikely that I will use it again. My plan will be to give the students the paper and the first 8 questions prior to class and then discuss those questions and the remaining questions in class. Students will be assessed on participation and completion as opposed to correctness.

Creative Commons License
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Comments

Anthony L. Fernandez / Merrimack College

This is a really nice LO and the article has lots of great spectroscopic data as well.

Mon, 02/09/2026 - 10:09 Permalink