March 29th, 2014
By about C17H36, the geometry of “cold-isolated” unbranched saturated alkenes is supposed not to contain any fully anti-periplanar conformations. [1] Indeed, a (co-crystal) of C16H34 shows it to have two-gauche bends.[2]. Surprisingly, the longest linear alkane I was able to find a crystal structure for, C28H58 appears to be fully extended[3],[4] (an early report of a low quality structure for C36H74[5] also appears to show it as linear).‡ Here I explore how standard DFT theories cope with these structures.
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References
- N.O.B. Lüttschwager, T.N. Wassermann, R.A. Mata, and M.A. Suhm, "The Last Globally Stable Extended Alkane", Angewandte Chemie International Edition, vol. 52, pp. 463-466, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201202894
- N. Cocherel, C. Poriel, J. Rault‐Berthelot, F. Barrière, N. Audebrand, A. Slawin, and L. Vignau, "New 3π‐2Spiro Ladder‐Type Phenylene Materials: Synthesis, Physicochemical Properties and Applications in OLEDs", Chemistry – A European Journal, vol. 14, pp. 11328-11342, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.200801428
- S.C. Nyburg, and A.R. Gerson, "Crystallography of the even <i>n</i>-alkanes: structure of C<sub>20</sub>H<sub>42</sub>", Acta Crystallographica Section B Structural Science, vol. 48, pp. 103-106, 1992. https://doi.org/10.1107/s0108768191011059
- R. Boistelle, B. Simon, and G. Pèpe, "Polytypic structures of n-C28H58 (octacosane) and n-C36H74 (hexatriacontane)", Acta Crystallographica Section B Structural Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry, vol. 32, pp. 1240-1243, 1976. https://doi.org/10.1107/s0567740876005025
- H.M.M. Shearer, and V. Vand, "The crystal structure of the monoclinic form of n-hexatriacontant", Acta Crystallographica, vol. 9, pp. 379-384, 1956. https://doi.org/10.1107/s0365110x5600111x
Tags: dispersion, energy, relative energy, relative free energy
Posted in General | No Comments »
March 18th, 2014
OK, you have to be British to understand the pun in the title, a famous comedy skit about four candles. Back to science, and my mention of some crystal data now having a DOI in the previous post. I thought it might be fun to replicate the contents of one of my ACS slides here.
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Tags: ACS, DOI, Google, Handle, JSON, LOCATT
Posted in Chemical IT | 5 Comments »
March 12th, 2014
My previous post related to the aromatic electrophilic substitution of benzene using as electrophile phenyl diazonium chloride. Another prototypical reaction, and again one where benzene is too inactive for the reaction to occur easily, is the catalyst-free bromination of benzene to give bromobenzene and HBr.
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Tags: activation energy, animation, aromatic, Boris Galabov, co-author, electrophilic, lowest energy solution, o/p director of aromatic electrophilic substitution, Paul Schleyer, pence, substitution
Posted in Interesting chemistry, reaction mechanism | 8 Comments »
March 8th, 2014
The diazo-coupling reaction dates back to the 1850s (and a close association with Imperial College via the first professor of chemistry there, August von Hofmann) and its mechanism was much studied in the heyday of physical organic chemistry.[1] Nick Greeves, purveyor of the excellent ChemTube3D site, contacted me about the transition state (I have commented previously on this aspect of aromatic electrophilic substitution). ChemTube3D recruits undergraduates to add new entries; Blue Jenkins is one such adding a section on dyes.
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References
- S.B. Hanna, C. Jermini, H. Loewenschuss, and H. Zollinger, "Indices of transition state symmetry in proton-transfer reactions. Kinetic isotope effects and Bronested's .beta. in base-catalyzed diazo-coupling reactions", Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 96, pp. 7222-7228, 1974. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja00830a009
Tags: covalent systems, first professor, free energy, Imperial College, lowest energy pose, Nick Greeves, professor of chemistry
Posted in reaction mechanism | 2 Comments »
March 2nd, 2014
A staple of introductory undergraduate teaching in organic chemistry is Markovnikov’s rule, which states: “the addition of a protic acid HX to an alkene results in the acid hydrogen (H) becoming attached to the carbon with fewer alkyl substituents and the halide (X) group to the carbon with more alkyl substituents“. Shortly thereafter, students are exposed to the “anti-Markovnikov” addition of borane to e.g. 2-methylpropene. In order to achieve a consistent explanation for both reactions, I normally show students the following mechanism. Here I introduce a “reality check” to the first component of that mechanism (for the oxidative step, see this post).
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Posted in reaction mechanism | 6 Comments »
February 16th, 2014
The potential energy surface for a molecule tells us about how it might react. These surfaces have been charted for thousands of reactions using quantum mechanics, and their basic features are thought to be well understood. Coming across an entirely new feature is rare. So what do you make of the following?
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Tags: potential energy surface
Posted in pericyclic, reaction mechanism | 11 Comments »
February 9th, 2014
This is the time of year when I deliver two back-2-back lecture courses, and yes I do update and revise the content! I am always on the look-out for nice new examples that illustrate how concepts and patterns in chemistry can be joined up to tell a good story. My attention is currently on conformational analysis; and here is an interesting new story to tell about it.
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Posted in General, Interesting chemistry | 2 Comments »
January 16th, 2014
So much to do, so little time to do it. That is my excuse at least. Right from my first post on this blog in 2008 I have tried to enhance it using Jmol, a Java-based applet (normally indicated with the caption Click for 3D). This has been pretty stable for some five years now, but a recent spate of security-based releases of the JRE (Java runtime environment) for desktop computers has impacted, the latest of which was released yesterday (Java 7, V 51). Put simply, when I started, an unsigned applet was fine. Now to run, it can only be a properly signed applet. Fortunately, there are two solutions:
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Tags: Java
Posted in General | 5 Comments »