Henry Rzepa's Blog

On 8th August this year, I posted on a fascinating article that had just appeared in Science[1] in which the crystal structure was reported of two small molecules, 1,3-dimethyl cyclobutadiene and carbon dioxide, entrapped together inside a calixarene cavity. Other journals (e.g. Nature Chemistry[2] ran the article as a research highlight (where the purpose is not a critical analysis but more of an alerting service). A colleague, David Scheschkewitz, pointed me to the article. We both independently analyzed different aspects, and first David, and then I then submitted separate articles for publication describing what we had found. Science today published both David’s thoughts[3] and also those of another independent group, Igor Alabugin and colleagues[4]. The original authors have in turn responded [5]. My own article on the topic will appear very shortly[6]. You can see quite a hornet’s nest has been stirred up!

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References

1. Y. Legrand, A. van der Lee, and M. Barboiu, "Single-Crystal X-ray Structure of 1,3-Dimethylcyclobutadiene by Confinement in a Crystalline Matrix", Science, vol. 329, pp. 299-302, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1188002
2. A. Pichon, "Structure of a strained ring", Nature Chemistry, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.823
3. D. Scheschkewitz, "Comment on “Single-Crystal X-ray Structure of 1,3-Dimethylcyclobutadiene by Confinement in a Crystalline Matrix”", Science, vol. 330, pp. 1047-1047, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1195752
4. I.V. Alabugin, B. Gold, M. Shatruk, and K. Kovnir, "Comment on “Single-Crystal X-ray Structure of 1,3-Dimethylcyclobutadiene by Confinement in a Crystalline Matrix”", Science, vol. 330, pp. 1047-1047, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1196188
5. Y. Legrand, A. van der Lee, and M. Barboiu, "Response to Comments on “Single-Crystal X-ray Structure of 1,3-Dimethylcyclobutadiene by Confinement in a Crystalline Matrix”", Science, vol. 330, pp. 1047-1047, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1195846
6. H.S. Rzepa, "Can 1,3-dimethylcyclobutadiene and carbon dioxide co-exist inside a supramolecular cavity?", Chem. Commun., vol. 47, pp. 1851-1853, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C0CC04023A