The second SLiThEr (Supporting Learning with interactive teaching: a hosted, engaging roundtable) hosted by Chip Nataro reviewing changes to his course as a result of the pandemic of 2020.
In 2009, Flick Coleman at Wellesley whipped up a brilliant little web-based tool that showed how the electronegativity and energy difference of atomic orbitals leads to changes in the resulting molecular orbitals. I've used it every year. But it runs on Flash, Flash is about to die forever (no longer supported as of Jan 2021), and I don't think Flick is going to make us an HTML5 version. (And wow I know I can't do that. Does somebody else know how to do that?)
Students first learn the basics of WebMO by building and optimizing 2 small molecules. They then calculate and visualize the molecular orbitals of two diatomic molecules (N2 and BF) and observe how going from a homonuclear to heteronuclear molecule changes the shape of different molecular orbitals.
As written this activity uses the WebMO demo server so no computational chemistry software/licences are required.
This literature discussion explores the physical structure, electronic structure, and luminescent properties of a lanthanide coordination complex (dysprosium) through discussion of “Synthesis, Structure, Photoluminescence, and Electroluminescence Properties of a New Dysprosium Complex,” Li et al. J. Phys. Chem.
This literature discussion was based on a short, readable piece from the trade magazine Chemical and Engineering News. Since this was written in a more general tone, it served as a reasonable introduction to carbenes for students in my advanced inorganic class. I have been looking to expand the examples of carbenes presented to students beyond those in the text. Simple examples of Fischer, Schrock, and N-heterocyclic carbenes are plentiful, but modern applications haven't been featured in the text that I use.
When transitioning into inorganic chemistry from organic chemistry, students are surprised by the complexity of metal complexes. To ease this transition, students are asked to look at the crystal structure of a coordination complex [(+/-)cis-dichloro-bis(ethylenediamine)-cobalt(III) chloride monohydrate], make some observations about what they see, and provide a list of questions that they would like answered. Students usually note that there are atoms/ions that are "floating" and are seemingly unattached to anything else in the structure.
In this paper (Llewellyn, Green and Cowley, Dalton Trans. 2006, 4164-4168) the synthesis and characterization of two cobalt compounds with an N-heterocyclic carbene ligand (IMes) are reported. the first, [Co(CO)3(IMes)Me] was prepared by the reaction of [Co(CO)3(PPh3)Me] with IMes. The second compound, [Co(CO)3(IMes)COMe] is formed by the addition of Co to the first.
This is a short set of slides I use to introduce aspects of coordination chemistry for my foundation level inorganic chemistry class.
The article from The Journal of the American Chemical Society by M. Kanatzidis et al describes a new ion-exchange material (FJSM-SnS) that shows high selectivity for rare-earth metals (REE) and very fast adsorption kinetics. A number of techniques are used to characterize the properties of the compound that students may not be very familiar with but the article presents in an accessible way.
This paper (Gayen, F.R.; Ali, A.A.; Bora, D.; Roy, S.; Saha, S.; Saikia, L.; Goswamee, R.L. and Saha, B. Dalton Trans. 2020, 49, 6578) describes the synthesis, characterization and catalytic activity of a copper complex with a ferrocene-containing Schiff base ligand. The article is relatively short but packed with information. However, many of the details that are assumed knowledge in the article make for wonderful questions some of which I hope I have captured.