This collection of learning objects was created to celebrate the National ACS Award Winners 2022 who are members of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry. The list of award winners is shown below.
A collection of all of the IONiC VIPEr SLiThErs (Supporting Learning with Interactive Teaching: a Hosted, Engaging Roundtable). These events are short presentations on a topic followed by a period of discussion between the presenter and live participants. Each of these events is recorded and posted to the IONiC VIPEr YouTube Channel.
This literature discussion LO was created for the ACS National Award Winners 2025 collection. Dr. Greg C. Fu for being the recipient of the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis 2025 from the American Chemical Society.
This collection of learning objects was created to celebrate the National ACS Award Winners 2025 who conduct research related to inorganic chemistry.
The list of award winners included in this collection are shown below. (* denotes learning object pending) IONiC members are welcome to develop more LOs for the collection.
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This Literature Discussion considers the synthesis of the first carbene-bismuthinidene complex by Gilliard and coworkers in 2019. This molecule serves as an illustration of different bonding models, as it can be described by multiple resonance structures invoking fully covalent, zwitterionic, and coordinate/dative bonding forms. Students analyze these resonance structures and their geometrical implications, then compare to the experimental structural evidence to come to a conclusion about which bonding model(s) best describe this molecule!
This is a literature-based end of semester project. After a semester of introducing literature in the form of typical literature discussions, this assignment is given to small groups. It may be easily amended or added to. Each group is provided with a paper and accompanying questions that are similar to the literature discussions they have done over the semester. They then must use these guiding questions to assemble a presentation to the class. The topics chosen and the guiding questions are designed to provide students with a taste of the many areas of inorganic chemistry that are no
This LO was inspired by a talk that Megan Fieser gave at the 2024 Organometallic Chemistry Gordon Research Conference. It was an excellent talk with some really interesting chemistry. Wanting something with practical application for my class focused on organometallic chemistry, I looked at one of her 'older' papers and found this really interesting rhodium catalyst. In the main paper for this LO (Mater. Horiz. 2023, 10, 2047), the catalytic dechlorination of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) using a rhodium pincer complex is described.
This is a literature discussion regarding electron counting. It involves several opportunities for students to use CBC to determine electron counts themselves. Then, it demonstrates the first case of a 21-electron complex, which leads to great discussion regarding the 18-electron rule. Throughout the discussion, students are introduced to many structural and spectrochemical analyses, some of which may be new to them.
This article focuses on a theoretical analysis of K-edge X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) of Fe(CO)5 in the D3h and C4v geometries. For the context of a one semester inorganic chemistry / physical inorganic chemistry course, the authors use computational methods and experimental X-ray techniques to generate the XANES spectra of two different geometries of Fe(CO)5. Densities of states are used to show overlap between specific orbitals (Fe p with C p), indicating pi-backbonding.
This literature discussion learning object describes the isolation and structure of tetrabenzylthorium, a molecule that was synthesized many years ago but was never thoroughly characterized.