PCCP Blog

Credit: U of Georgia

Paul von Ragué Schleyer, a leading figure in physical organic chemistry, died on November 21^st at his home in Georgia, USA. Schleyer pioneered the use of computational chemistry in characterizing new and widely used concepts and made vast contributions to a broad range of physical organic, organometallic, inorganic, and theoretical chemistry topics.

‘Paul Schleyer was one of the greatest chemists of the 20^th century’, says Herbert Mayr, from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. ‘Paul’s impact on Organic Chemistry is only inadequately reflected by the impressive numbers of articles he had published. Of even greater importance was his influence on the thinking of a countless number of scientists who discussed with him their projects, collaborated with him, or just attended his lectures.’

Schleyer attended Princeton University gaining an A.B. degree in Chemistry in 1951, followed by Harvard University where he received a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry under Paul Bartlett in 1957. In 1976 Schleyer moved to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Germany and became a frequent speaker at international meetings, forming close relationships with many chemists with whom he would continue to maintain an active correspondence. Schleyer extended his career well past the mandatory retirement age in Germany and continued to contribute to the field as Graham Perdue Professor at the University of Georgia.

PCCP would like to send our deepest condolences to Paul Schleyer’s family and colleagues.

Is C₆₀ buckminsterfullerene aromatic?
Zhongfang Chen,  Judy I. Wu,   Clémence Corminboeuf,  Jonathan Bohmann,  Xin Lu,  Andreas Hirsch and  Paul von Ragué Schleyer
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012,14, 14886-14891

D _3h CN₃Be₃⁺ and CO₃Li₃⁺: viable planar hexacoordinate carbon prototypes
Yan-Bo Wu, Yan Duan, Gang Lu, Hai-Gang Lu, Pin Yang, Paul von Ragué Schleyer, Gabriel Merino, Rafael Islas and Zhi-Xiang Wang
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012,14, 14760-14763

Scientists from China have coated the high energy explosive RDX (hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine) with nanodiamonds in an attempt to make safer explosives.

The group, led by Yi Tong, from the Beijing Institute of Technology, prepared detonation nanodiamonds by detonating a mixture of TNT and RDX in a closed metallic chamber. Detonation nanodiamonds are known to have excellent mechanical properties, including high thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity, whilst being chemically reactive but also environmentally benign. RDX was coated with different proportions of nanodiamonds to try to stabilise the explosive. This is important as you don’t want explosives to detonate if they are accidently heated when in storage.

By studying the thermodynamics of the resulting composites, the group found that nanodiamond coatings of between 1/7 and 1/5 of the mass of the RDX led to composites that were more stable than RDX alone, but that were more reactive than composites with thinner coatings. They also found that increasing the nanodiamond ratio to more than 1/3 of the mass of the RDX hindered the decomposition of the material.

Interested to know more?

Read the full article by Rachel Wood in Chemistry World here…

Read the article in PCCP:

The effect of a detonation nanodiamond coating on the thermal decomposition properties of RDX explosives
Yi Tong, Rui Liu and Tonglai Zhang
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C4CP02237H

The Gordon F. Kirkbright bursary award is a prestigious annual award that enables a promising student/non-tenured young scientist of any nation to attend a recognised scientific meeting or visit a place of learning.

The fund for this bursary was established in 1985 as a memorial to Professor Gordon Kirkbright in recognition of his contributions to analytical spectroscopy and to science in general. Although the fund is administered by the Association of British Spectroscopists (ABS) Trust, the award is not restricted to spectroscopists.

Applications are invited for the 2015 Gordon Kirkbright Bursary.

For further information contact John Chalmers by email: vibspecconsult@aol.com

The closing date for entries is 31 December 2014.

Researchers at the University of Reading have come closer to understanding why fatty acids, emitted in significant quantities by fast food outlets cooking meat, persist for so long in the atmosphere.

Christian Pfrang and colleagues, studied the ozone oxidation kinetics of methyl oleate monolayers at the air–water interface using experiments designed to mimic the atmospheric degradation of aerosols formed from fatty acid surfactants and moisture droplets. The experiments were carried out by skimming a fine beam of neutrons off a free air–water interface while the oxidation reaction took place. They found that the methyl ester monolayers broke down much faster than expected based on reported lifetimes in the atmosphere, suggesting that the long-chain organics are taken up into the droplet itself, where they are protected from further ozonolysis.

The presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere is a major health concern and may ultimately have significant climate change implications. Reports suggest that around a third of directly emitted aerosols above central London come from cooking, the majority of which are rich in oleic acid derivatives produced by cooking meat. These types of emissions are on the rise as vehicles move towards biofuels, another source of fatty acid methyl esters.

Interested to know more?

Read the full article by Richard Massey in Chemistry World here…

Read the article in PCCP:

Ozonolysis of methyl oleate monolayers at the air–water interface: oxidation kinetics, reaction products and atmospheric implications
Christian Pfrang, Federica Sebastiani, Claire O. M. Lucas, Martin D. King, Ioan D. Hoare, Debby Chang and Richard A. Campbell  
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C4CP00775A

A new spectroscopic technique for studying electronically excited molecules at very high angular momentum has been developed and tested by scientists in Canada.

The team, from the University of British Columbia, headed by Valery Milner, have used an optical centrifuge to excite oxygen to rotational states that otherwise can’t be reached. An optical centrifuge combines two laser pulses to create an intense electric field which undergoes angular acceleration to drive molecules into the remarkable angular momentum states. The super rotation state reached for oxygen in the study is equivalent to heating the molecule to 50,000K, a temperature that is too hot for the molecule to survive. A spectroscopic technique called resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionisation was combined with the centrifuge and by carefully controlling and calibrating the rotational speed of the centrifuge a spectrum can be viewed as a two-dimensional function of photon energy and angular momentum.

‘It greatly simplifies the spectra,’ says Aleksey Korobenko, the lead scientist on this study. ‘Even when the photon energy branches are overlapping, you can track one by one the rotational peaks which you can’t otherwise separate out.’

Interested to know more?

Read the full article by Rachel Wood in Chemistry World here…

Read the article in PCCP:

Rotational spectroscopy with an optical centrifuge
Aleksey Korobenko, Alexander A. Milner, John W. Hepburn and Valery Milner
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54598A, Paper

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Prizes and Awards recognise achievements by individuals, teams and organisations in advancing the chemical sciences. There are over 80 Prizes and Awards available covering all areas of the chemical sciences.

You still have time to make your nomination before the deadline on 15th January 2014

As well as the cash prize of up to £5,000 and an inscribed medal , all Prize and Award winners are given the opportunity to present their work to the wider community by giving lectures at several universities around the UK.

Prizes are available in the categories various categories, including Biosciences, Environment, Sustainability and Energy, Materials Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Industry & Technology.

Please nominate someone or be nominated by a Royal Society of Chemistry member by visiting

http://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/Awards/2014-RSC-Prizes-Awards.asp

“The publicity associated with my RSC Award resulted in the increased recognition for all my great colleagues who contributed and supported this programme over the years.” Monica Papworth

We are pleased to announce the inclusion of Altmetrics on PCCP.

With a constantly changing publishing landscape and changes to the way people use scientific literature, altmetrics is a measure that can monitor the level of conversation and interest in a particular piece of research at the article level. Thus altmetrics provides an additional modern metric for our authors to measure the impact of their work, rather than rely solely on citations and impact factor.

To view altmetrics on PCCP articles, use the Metrics tab as pictured below on the article landing page.

A press release from Altmetrics is available on our website.

What do you think? We are interested to hear your feedback on this new development and how you are utilising these new types of metrics. Please leave your comments below.