{"id":7678,"date":"2012-09-15T18:28:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678"},"modified":"2012-09-17T19:45:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T18:45:05","slug":"frozen-semibullvalene-a-holy-grail-and-a-bis-homoaromatic-molecule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678","title":{"rendered":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule)."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"kcite-section\" kcite-section-id=\"7678\">\n<p>Semibullvalene is an unsettling molecule. Whilst it has a classical structure describable by a combination of Lewis-style two electron and four electron bonds, its NMR behaviour reveals it to be highly fluxional. This means that even at low temperatures, the position of these two-electron bonds rapidly shifts in the equilibrium shown below. Nevertheless, this dynamic behaviour can be frozen out at sufficiently low temperatures. But the barrier was sufficiently low that a challenge was set; could one achieve a system in which the barrier was removed entirely, to freeze out the coordinates of the molecule into a structure where the transition state (shown at the top) became instead a true minimum (bottom)? A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=783\" target=\"_blank\">similar challenge<\/a>\u00a0had been set for freezing out the transition state for the Sn2 reaction into a minimum, the topic also of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7601\" target=\"_blank\">more recent post<\/a> here. Here I explore how close we might be to achieving inversion of the semibullvalene [3,3] sigmatropic potential.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7679\" title=\"semibullvalene\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Why might such a frozen transition state be interesting? Well, all transition states for allowed <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">thermal<\/span> pericyclic reactions can be described as aromatic. If one were able to transmogrify such a transition state into a minimum, then it too would be expected to be aromatic, but a most unusual type of aromatic. The C-C bonds which represent the breaking and forming bonds in a [3,3] sigmatropic rearrangement would in effect be two-centre 1-electron bonds, and those electrons would be part of the aromatic sextet. Such bonds are normally referred to as homoaromatic, examples of which are <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1021\/ct8001915\" target=\"_blank\">pretty rare<\/a>. In my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7643\" target=\"_blank\">previous post<\/a>, I had noted a crystal structure<span id=\"cite_ITEM-7678-0\" name=\"citation\"><a href=\"#ITEM-7678-0\">[1]<\/a><\/span> that apparently sustains two equal C-C bonds of length\u00a01.99\u00c5. However, a <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10042\/20319\" target=\"_blank\">calculation at this geometry<\/a> reveals it in fact to be a transition state (above, top), with an imaginary mode of 275<em>i<\/em> cm<sup>-1<\/sup>. So the challenge (computationally at least) is to find a system where this imaginary mode is changed to become real rather than imaginary.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7681\" style=\"width: 241px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7681\" class=\" wp-image-7681 \" title=\"CAZFUE\" onclick=\"jmolInitialize('..\/Jmol\/');jmolSetAppletColor('white');jmolApplet([450,450],'load wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/CASFUE.log;frame 27;measure 2 8;measure 6 4;vectors on;vectors 4;vectors scale 5.0; color vectors blue; vibration 20;animation mode loop;');\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/CAZFUE1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"224\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7681\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">CAZFUE. Click for animation of imaginary transition state mode.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My effort to achieve this involved augmenting CAZFUE with a further two cyano groups. This did indeed <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10042\/20320\" target=\"_blank\">reduce the imaginary mode<\/a> to 74<em>i<\/em> cm<sup>-1<\/sup>; we are getting close!\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7684\" style=\"width: 305px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7684\" class=\" wp-image-7684 \" title=\"CAZFUE-tetracycano\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/CAZFUE-tetracycano.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"262\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7684\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tetracyano derivative of CAZFUE. Click for animation.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The next step was to read a recent article<span id=\"cite_ITEM-7678-1\" name=\"citation\"><a href=\"#ITEM-7678-1\">[2]<\/a><\/span> in which replacing the key C-C bond with a C-N bond was observed to reduce the barrier for the rearrangement to ~ 4 kcal\/mol. So I immediately <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10042\/20321\" target=\"_blank\">computed the tetra-azo system<\/a>, in which the two key C-C bonds are now replaced by N-N bonds in order to extend this effect.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7686\" style=\"width: 298px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7686\" class=\" wp-image-7686 \" title=\"tetraaza\" onclick=\"jmolInitialize('..\/Jmol\/');jmolSetAppletColor('white');jmolApplet([450,450],'load wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/tetraaza.log;frame 71;measure 46 43;measure 44 45;vectors on;vectors 4;vectors scale 5.0; color vectors blue; vibration 20;animation mode loop;');\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/tetraaza.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"288\" height=\"256\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7686\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tetra-azo semibullvalene. Click for animation of key frozen mode.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It was gratifying to observe that the [3,3] sigmatropic vibration, imaginary (<em>i.e.<\/em> corresponding to a transition state) in the previous examples, became <strong>+ve<\/strong> (+238 cm<sup>-1<\/sup>) in this system. The two N-N bonds are however not completely symmetric (2.06 and 2.17\u00c5), but they are in effect essentially frozen at the half-way stage of the equilibrium.<\/p>\n<p>The final step in this path is to combine the two effects above, by exploring the <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10042\/20322\" target=\"_blank\">di-cyano-diaza derivative<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7692\" style=\"width: 284px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7692\" class=\" wp-image-7692  \" title=\"dicyano-diaza\" onclick=\"jmolInitialize('..\/Jmol\/');jmolSetAppletColor('white');jmolApplet([450,450],'load wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dicn-diaza.log;frame 17;measure 2 21;measure 22 5;vectors on;vectors 4;vectors scale 5.0; color vectors blue; vibration 20;animation mode loop;');\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dicyano-diaza.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"274\" height=\"237\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7692\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Di-cyano, diazo derivative. Click for 3D.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This now has C<sub>2<\/sub> (chiral)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.6084\/m9.figshare.95855\" target=\"_blank\">exact two-fold symmetry<\/a>, with C-N distances of 2.139\u00c5. The [3,3] sigmatropic vibrational mode is again real, with a value of 255 cm<sup>-1<\/sup>. A real candidate for synthesis perhaps?<\/p>\n<p>Finally, is it aromatic? The wavefunction for this system is stable (which means no triplet state lower in energy can be found), so it stands a good chance of being so. I will report back on this aspect in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678\" target=\"_blank\">later post.<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Postscript:<\/strong> The above calculation for the last system was done at the B3LYP\/6-311G(d,p)\/SCRF=thf level. A similar result is obtained at <em>e.g.<\/em> a \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10042\/20323\" target=\"_blank\">MP2\/6-311G(d,p)\/SCRF=thf level<\/a>; the \u00a0[3,3] vibrational mode has the real value of 318 cm<sup>-1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<h2>References<\/h2>\n    <ol class=\"kcite-bibliography csl-bib-body\"><li id=\"ITEM-7678-0\">L.M. Jackman, A. Benesi, A. Mayer, H. Quast, E.M. Peters, K. Peters, and H.G. Von Schnering, \"The Cope rearrangement of 1,5-dimethylsemibullvalene-2,6- and 3,7-dicarbonitriles in the solid state\", <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/i>, vol. 111, pp. 1512-1513, 1989. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021\/ja00186a064\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021\/ja00186a064<\/a>\n\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"ITEM-7678-1\">S. Zhang, J. Wei, M. Zhan, Q. Luo, C. Wang, W. Zhang, and Z. Xi, \"2,6-Diazasemibullvalenes: Synthesis, Structural Characterization, Reaction Chemistry, and Theoretical Analysis\", <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/i>, vol. 134, pp. 11964-11967, 2012. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021\/ja305581f\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021\/ja305581f<\/a>\n\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<\/div> <!-- kcite-section 7678 -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Semibullvalene is an unsettling molecule. Whilst it has a classical structure describable by a combination of Lewis-style two electron and four electron bonds, its NMR behaviour reveals it to be highly fluxional. This means that even at low temperatures, the position of these two-electron bonds rapidly shifts in the equilibrium shown below. Nevertheless, this dynamic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":5,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[914,24,2650,317,843],"ppma_author":[2661],"class_list":["post-7678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-chemistry","tag-candidate-for-synthesis-perhaps","tag-energy","tag-pericyclic","tag-postscript","tag-reaction-mechanism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule). - Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule). - Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Semibullvalene is an unsettling molecule. Whilst it has a classical structure describable by a combination of Lewis-style two electron and four electron bonds, its NMR behaviour reveals it to be highly fluxional. This means that even at low temperatures, the position of these two-electron bonds rapidly shifts in the equilibrium shown below. Nevertheless, this dynamic [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-15T17:28:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-09-17T18:45:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Henry Rzepa\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule). - Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule). - Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog","og_description":"Semibullvalene is an unsettling molecule. Whilst it has a classical structure describable by a combination of Lewis-style two electron and four electron bonds, its NMR behaviour reveals it to be highly fluxional. This means that even at low temperatures, the position of these two-electron bonds rapidly shifts in the equilibrium shown below. Nevertheless, this dynamic [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678","og_site_name":"Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog","article_published_time":"2012-09-15T17:28:18+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-09-17T18:45:05+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"Henry Rzepa","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Henry Rzepa","Estimated reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678"},"author":{"name":"Henry Rzepa","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281"},"headline":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule).","datePublished":"2012-09-15T17:28:18+00:00","dateModified":"2012-09-17T18:45:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678"},"wordCount":669,"commentCount":3,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg","keywords":["candidate for synthesis perhaps","energy","pericyclic","Postscript","Reaction Mechanism"],"articleSection":["Interesting chemistry"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678","url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678","name":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule). - Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg","datePublished":"2012-09-15T17:28:18+00:00","dateModified":"2012-09-17T18:45:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/semibullvalene.svg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7678#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Frozen Semibullvalene: a holy grail (and a bis-homoaromatic molecule)."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/","name":"Henry Rzepa&#039;s Blog","description":"Chemistry with a twist","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2b40f7b9c872a4dc1547e040a11b6281","name":"Henry Rzepa","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g370be3a7397865e4fd161aefeb0a5a85","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","caption":"Henry Rzepa"},"description":"Henry Rzepa is Emeritus Professor of Computational Chemistry at Imperial College London.","sameAs":["https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8635-8390"],"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?author=1"}]}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pDef7-1ZQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7756,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7756","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":0},"title":"The ten-electron homologue of semibullvalene.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"September 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Semibullvalene is a molecule which undergoes a facile [3,3] sigmatropic shift. So facile that it appears this equilibrium can be frozen out at the transition state if suitable substituents are used. This is a six-electron process, which leads to one of those homologous questions; what happens with ten electrons? The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting chemistry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/55.svg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7721,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=7721","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":1},"title":"Predicted properties of a candidate for a frozen semibullvalene.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"September 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I am following up on one unfinished thread in my previous post; a candidate was proposed in which the transition state for [3,3] sigmatropic rearrangement in a semibullvalene might be frozen out to become instead a stable minimum. The hypothesis was that such a species would be aromatic, a bis-homoaromatic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting chemistry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/dicyano-diaza-aim.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2559,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=2559","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":2},"title":"(Almost) 100 years of Lewis structures: are they still fit for purpose?","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"September 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The molecule below was characterised in 1996 (DOI: 10.1246\/cl.1996.489) and given the name tris(dithiolene)vanadium (IV). No attempt was made in the original article to give this molecule a Lewis structure using Lewis electron pair bonds. This blog will explore some of the issues that arise when this is attempted.1 The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting chemistry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/V1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27870,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=27870","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":3},"title":"The one-electron  carbon-carbon bond: Hexafluoroethane and ethane radical cations.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 3, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In the previous post, I looked at the recently reported hexa-arylethane containing a carbon-carbon one-electron bond, its structure having been determined by x-ray diffraction (XRD). The measured C-C bond length was ~2.9a\u00c5 and my conclusion was that the C...C region represented more of a weak \"interaction\" than of a bond\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting chemistry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8048,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=8048","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":4},"title":"Trimethylenemethane Ruthenium benzene","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"October 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Every once in a while, one encounters a molecule which instantly makes an interesting point. Thus Ruthenium is ten electrons short of completing an 18-electron shell, and it can form a complex with benzene on one face and a ligand known as trimethylenemethane on the other. This four-carbon molecule has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting chemistry&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting chemistry","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/JODLIX.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":16758,"url":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=16758","url_meta":{"origin":7678,"position":5},"title":"What&#8217;s in a name? Carbenes:  a reality check.","author":"Henry Rzepa","date":"September 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;crystal_structure_mining&quot;","block_context":{"text":"crystal_structure_mining","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?cat=1745"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"authors":[{"term_id":2661,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"admin","display_name":"Henry Rzepa","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/897b6740f7f599bca7942cdf7d7914af5988937ae0e3869ab09aebb87f26a731?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7678"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7700,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678\/revisions\/7700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7678"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=7678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}