Archive for July, 2015
Saturday, July 25th, 2015
I recently followed this bloggers trail; link1 → link2 to arrive at this delightful short commentary on atom-atom bonds in crystals[1] by Jack Dunitz. Here he discusses that age-old question (to chemists), what is a bond? Even almost 100 years after Gilbert Lewis’ famous analysis,[2] we continue to ponder this question. Indeed, quite a debate on this topic broke out in a recent post here. My eye was caught by one example in Jack's article: "The close stacking of planar anions, as occurs in salts of croconic acid …far from producing a lowering of the crystal energy, this stacking interaction in itself leads to an increase by several thousand kJ mol−1 arising from Coulombic repulsion between the doubly negatively charged anions" I thought I might explore this point a bit further in this post.
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References
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J.D. Dunitz, "Intermolecular atom–atom bonds in crystals?", IUCrJ, vol. 2, pp. 157-158, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S2052252515002006
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G.N. Lewis, "THE ATOM AND THE MOLECULE.", Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 38, pp. 762-785, 1916. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja02261a002
Tags:Carbon, Cations, Chemical bond, Chemical IT, control search, Croconic acid, crystal energy, crystal structure search, Gilbert Lewis, Interesting chemistry, intermolecular search, Jack Dunitz, overall energy balance, Proton
Posted in crystal_structure_mining | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 18th, 2015
This is a little historical essay into the electronic structure of naphthalene, presented as key dates (and also collects comments made which were appended to other posts).
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Tags:Historical, Naphthalene, Oscillation
Posted in Uncategorised | 8 Comments »
Saturday, July 11th, 2015
Previously on the kinetic isotope effects for the Baeyer-Villiger reaction, I was discussing whether a realistic computed model could be constructed for the mechanism. The measured KIE or kinetic isotope effects (along with the approximate rate of the reaction) were to be our reality check. I had used ΔΔG energy differences and then HRR (harmonic rate ratios) to compute[1] the KIE, and Dan Singleton asked if I had included heavy atom tunnelling corrections in the calculation, which I had not. His group has shown these are not negligible for low-barrier reactions such as ring opening of cyclopropyl carbinyl radical.[2] As a prelude to configuring his suggested programs for computing tunnelling (GAUSSRATE and POLYRATE), it was important I learnt how to reproduce his KIE values.[2] Hence the title of this post. Now, read on.
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References
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Rzepa, Henry S.., "KINISOT. A basic program to calculate kinetic isotope effects using normal coordinate analysis of transition state and reactants.", 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19272
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O.M. Gonzalez-James, X. Zhang, A. Datta, D.A. Hrovat, W.T. Borden, and D.A. Singleton, "Experimental Evidence for Heavy-Atom Tunneling in the Ring-Opening of Cyclopropylcarbinyl Radical from Intramolecular 12C/13C Kinetic Isotope Effects", Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 132, pp. 12548-12549, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja1055593
Tags:activation free energy, Basis set, Dan Singleton, energy differences, gas phase calculation, Kinetic isotope effect, PDF, Physical organic chemistry
Posted in reaction mechanism | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 8th, 2015
Peter Edwards has just given the 2015 Hofmann lecture here at Imperial on the topic of solvated electrons. An organic chemist knows this species as “e–” and it occurs in ionic compounds known as electrides; chloride = the negative anion of a chlorine atom, hence electride = the negative anion of an electron. It struck me how very odd these molecules are and so I thought I might share here some properties I computed after the lecture for a specific electride known as GAVKIS.[1] If you really want to learn (almost) everything about these strange species, go read the wonderful review by Zurek, Edwards and Hoffmann,[2] including a lesson in the history of chemistry stretching back almost 200 years.
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References
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D.L. Ward, R.H. Huang, and J.L. Dye, "Structures of alkalides and electrides. I. Structure of potassium cryptand[2.2.2] electride", Acta Crystallographica Section C Crystal Structure Communications, vol. 44, pp. 1374-1376, 1988. http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0108270188002847
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E. Zurek, P. Edwards, and R. Hoffmann, "A Molecular Perspective on Lithium–Ammonia Solutions", Angewandte Chemie International Edition, vol. 48, pp. 8198-8232, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200900373
Tags:Interesting chemistry
Posted in Uncategorised | 87 Comments »
Wednesday, July 1st, 2015
Recollect this earlier post on the topic of the Baeyer-Villiger reaction. In 1999 natural abundance kinetic isotope effects were reported[1] and I set out to calculate the values predicted for a particular model constructed using Quantum mechanics. This comparison of measurement and calculation is nowadays a standard verification of both experiment and theory. When the two disagree either the computational model is wrong or incomplete, or the remoter possibility that there is something not understood about the experiment.
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References
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D.A. Singleton, and M.J. Szymanski, "Simultaneous Determination of Intermolecular and Intramolecular 13C and 2H Kinetic Isotope Effects at Natural Abundance", Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 121, pp. 9455-9456, 1999. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja992016z
Tags:Dan Singleton, Donna Blackmond, energy method, Erik Plata, free energy method, Jordi Bures Amat, Keith Laidig, Kinetic isotope effect, Physical organic chemistry, Yale
Posted in reaction mechanism | 4 Comments »