September 21st, 2016
Nucleophiles are species that seek to react with an electron deficient centre by donating a lone or a π-bond pair of electrons. The ambident variety has two or more such possible sources in the same molecule, an example of which might be hydroxylamine or H2NOH. I previously discussed how for this example, the energetics allow the nitrogen lone pair (Lp) to win out over the O Lp. Here, I play a similar game, but this time setting an NLp up against a π-pair.
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Posted in crystal_structure_mining, reaction mechanism | No Comments »
September 19th, 2016
I previously explored stabilized “carbenes” with the formal structures (R2N)2C:, concluding that perhaps the alternative ionic representation R2N+=C–NR2 might reflect their structures better. Here I take a broader look at the “carbene” landscape before asking the question “what about nitrenes?”
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Posted in crystal_structure_mining | 1 Comment »
September 11th, 2016
To quote from Wikipedia: in chemistry, a carbene is a molecule containing a neutral carbon atom with a valence of two and two unshared valence electrons. The most ubiquitous type of carbene of recent times is the one shown below as 1, often referred to as a resonance stabilised or persistent carbene. This type is of interest because of its ability to act as a ligand to an astonishingly wide variety of metals, with many of the resulting complexes being important catalysts. The Wiki page on persistent carbenes shows them throughout in form 1 below, thus reinforcing the belief that they have a valence of two and by implication six (2×2 shared + 2 unshared) electrons in the valence shell of carbon. Here I consider whether this name is really appropriate.
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Tags: Carbenes, chemical bonding, energy barrier, free energy, Functional groups, Ligand, Mesoionic carbene, Organometallic chemistry, Persistent carbene, quantum mechanical solution, Reactive intermediates, Transition metal carbene complex, Valence, Valence electron
Posted in crystal_structure_mining, General | No Comments »
September 1st, 2016
Bromoallene is a pretty simple molecule, with two non-equivalent double bonds. How might it react with an electrophile, say dimethyldioxirane (DMDO) to form an epoxide?[cite]10.1039/C6CC06395K[/cite] Here I explore the difference between two different and very simple approaches to predicting its reactivity. 
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Tags: chemical bonding, chemical reaction, Chemistry, Delocalized electron, double bond, energy, energy difference, HOMO/LUMO, lowest energy, Molecular orbital, Natural bond orbital, Nature, Physics, Quantum chemistry, stable HOMO-1
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August 17th, 2016
In the previous post, I noted that a chemistry publisher is about to repeat an earlier experiment in serving pre-prints of journal articles. It would be fair to suggest that following the first great period of journal innovation, the boom in rapid publication “camera-ready” articles in the 1960s, the next period of rapid innovation started around 1994 driven by the uptake of the World-Wide-Web. The CLIC project[cite]10.1080/13614579509516846[/cite] aimed to embed additional data-based components into the online presentation of the journal Chem Communications, taking the form of pop-up interactive 3D molecular models and spectra. The Internet Journal of Chemistry was designed from scratch to take advantage of this new medium.[cite]10.1080/00987913.2000.10764578[/cite] Here I take a look at one recent experiment in innovation which incorporates “augmented reality”.[cite]10.1055/s-0035-1562579[/cite]
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Tags: Academia, Academic publishing, Boom, Design, Design Services, Innovation, Internet Journal, online presentation, Preprint, Publishing, reaction energy profile, technology helps, Web browser, web-based molecular viewer
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
August 16th, 2016
This week the ACS announced its intention to establish a “ChemRxiv preprint server to promote early research sharing“. This was first tried quite a few years ago, following the example of especially the physicists. As I recollect the experiment lasted about a year, attracted few submissions and even fewer of high quality. Will the concept succeed this time, in particular as promoted by a commercial publisher rather than a community of scientists (as was the original physicists model)?
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Tags: Academia, Academic publishing, article processing charge, author, Data publishing, Data sharing, food, Grey literature, Open access, Open science, PDF, Peter Murray-Rust, pre-print server, Preprint, preprint server, Public sphere, Publishing, Scholarly communication, Technology/Internet
Posted in Chemical IT | 1 Comment »
August 8th, 2016
The previous post contained an exploration of the anomeric effect as it occurs at an atom centre X for which the effect is manifest in crystal structures. Here I quantify the effect, by selecting the test molecule MeO-X-OMe, where X is of two types:
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Tags: Anomer, Anomeric effect, Atomic orbital, Carbohydrate chemistry, Carbohydrates, Chemical bond, chemical bonding, Chemistry, Hydrogen bond, interaction energy, Lone pair, Physical organic chemistry, Quantum chemistry
Posted in Interesting chemistry | No Comments »
August 6th, 2016
In the last few posts, I have explored the anomeric effect as it occurs at an atom centre X. Here I try to summarise the atoms for which the effect is manifest in crystal structures.
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Tags: Acetals, Alkane stereochemistry, Anomer, Anomeric effect, Atomic orbital, Carbohydrate chemistry, Carbohydrates, Chemical bond, Chemistry, interaction energy, Lone pair, Physical organic chemistry, Stereochemistry
Posted in crystal_structure_mining, Interesting chemistry | No Comments »
August 4th, 2016
Here is a little molecule that can be said to be pretty electron rich. There are lots of lone pairs present, and not a few electron-deficient σ-bonds. I thought it might be fun to look at the stereoelectronic interactions set up in this little system.
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Tags: chemical bonding, Sigma bond, Stereoelectronic effect, X-ray
Posted in crystal_structure_mining, Interesting chemistry | No Comments »
August 1st, 2016
In March, I posted from the ACS meeting in San Diego on the topic of Research data: Managing spectroscopy-NMR, and noted a talk by MestreLab Research on how a tool called Mpublish in the forthcoming release of their NMR analysis software Mestrenova could help. With that release now out, the opportunity arose to test the system.
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Tags: Acrobat, analysis software, chemical, Chemistry, City: San Diego, format type chemical/x-mnpub, media type, Mestrenova, non-commercial open software packages, Nuclear magnetic resonance, Nuclear magnetic resonance spectra database, Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, PDF, public key, Science, Scientific method, spectroscopy, Technology/Internet
Posted in Chemical IT | 3 Comments »