Dalton Transactions Blog

In this Dalton Transactions Hot Article, Richard Winpenny and colleagues report the characterisation of isolated finite chromium based horseshoe shaped chains.  The team used INS, magnetic and EPR techniques to determine the inter-chromium exchange coupling and single ion zero field splitting (ZFS) within the chain segments.

Manipulating quantum spin levels via ligands, which play no role in super-exchange, is of general interest to the practise of spin Hamilton modelling.

Interested?  Read more about these magnetic chains here.

Varying spin state composition by the choice of capping ligand in a family of molecular chains: detailed analysis of magnetic properties of chromium(III) horseshoes
Michael L. Baker, Richard E. P. Winpenny et al.
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article, 10.1039/c0dt01243b

Fernando Lopez Ortiz and colleagues from the Universidad de Almerıa in Spain have used NMR correlation experiments between 89Y and 31P nuclei to elucidate the structures of yttrium complexes in solution which have previously proved notoriously tricky to characterise.

Find out how they did this in their Dalton Transactions Hot Article. FREE to read until the 19th February 2011.

31 P,89Y Shift correlation. Application to the speciation of yttrium complexes with triphenylphosphine oxide 
Ignacio Fernández, Víctor Yañez-Rodríguez and Fernando López Ortiz
Dalton Trans., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01733G, Communication

In this Dalton Transactions Hot article, ionic liquids are made by reactive distillation.

Peter Licence and co-workers from the University of Nottingham discovered this method by accident while researching [C₄C₁Im][BF₄], when they realised that the substance they had after distillation was very different to their starting materials. Further investigation revealed they had created a borane-substituted imidazol-2-ylidene, a compound with potential to be an excellent solvent for a wide variety of reactions.

The conventional technique to make these type of ionic liquids is via a direct nucleophilic reaction, which is experimentally difficult as the starting reagents are highly reactive. This distillation technique is particularly good, not only because of the stability and availability of the starting materials, but because of the high purity of the obtained products.

Read on to find out more details about this technique.

Borane-substituted imidazol-2-ylidenes: syntheses in vacuo
Alasdair W. Taylor, Kevin R. J. Lovelock, Robert G. Jones and Peter Licence
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01240H, Paper

READ FOR FREE until February 11th

In this Dalton Transactions Hot Article read about a ReIV–MoVI compound which is the very first example of a heterodinuclear oxalato-bridged complex in the coordination chemistry of molybdenum. This communication will be FREE for you to access until the 2nd February.

Synthesis, crystal structure and magnetic properties of an oxalato-bridged ReIVMoVI heterobimetallic complex
José Martínez-Lillo, Donatella Armentano, Giovanni De Munno, Francesc Lloret, Miguel Julve and Juan Faus
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01323D, Communication

In this Dalton Transactions Hot article, calcium silicate microparticles doped with rare earth ions were loaded with ibuprofen and tested for their drug delivery properties.

The microparticles showed strong luminescence, which increased as the ibuprofen was released, allowing the drug delivery to be monitored, a highly useful property in therapeutics.

Preparation of luminescent and mesoporous Eu3+/Tb3+ doped calcium silicate microspheres as drug carriers via a template route
Xiaojiao Kang, Shanshan Huang, Piaoping Yang, Ping’an Ma, Dongmei Yang and Jun Lin
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01390K, Paper

READ FOR FREE until 5th February

In this Dalton Transactions Hot article, the kinetics of rhodium porphyrin b-hydroxy alkyl reactions in water and DMSO are investigated.

Understanding the mechanics of these types of reaction will lead to better selectivity in catalytic oxidation of alkenes and, as the authors say,  ‘may lead to the development of water soluble catalysts’. These can then be used to produce a green form of oxidation chemistry.

FREE TO READ until January 20th

Mechanistic comparison of β-H elimination, β-OH elimination, and nucleophilic displacement reactions of β-hydroxy alkyl rhodium porphyrin complexes
Bing Wu, Jiadi Zhang, Lin Yun and Xuefeng Fu
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01146K, Paper

In this Dalton Transactions Hot article, researchers at Nanjing University, China have developed a fluorescent sensor to detect the biologically important anion pyrophosphate.

Pyrophosphate in the body is integral to the production of ATP and DNA, and is involved in preventing the formation of hydroxyapatite in extracellular fluid. A lack of pyrophosphate leads to medial calcification, while an excess has been linked to calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate deposition disease, a form of rheumatism.

In this paper the authors make a ratiometric fluorescent sensor using a naphthalene appended tetraazamacrocycle (1)-Zn²⁺ complex. The sensor is not influenced by its environment, as the ratio of fluorescent intensities at two different wavelengths is measured, rather than using one lone fluorescence, as in the conventional method.

READ FOR FREE until January 20th.

A Zn2+-specific turn-on fluorescent probe for ratiometric sensing of pyrophosphate in both water and blood serum
Jinghan Wen, Zhirong Geng, Yuxin Yin, Zhong Zhang and Zhilin Wang
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01262A, Paper

Shilun Qiu, Guangshan Zhu and co-workers have made a microporous organic-inorganic silsesquioxane-based framework, JUC-Z1, which is an effective absorber of both benzene and water. The team used a Yamamoto-type of Ullmann cross-coupling reaction to make the framework. ‘Its ability to selectively adsorb benzene makes JUC-Z1 greatly promising for applications dealing with environmental aromatic pollutant problems,’ say Qiu and Zhu.

Read more in their Dalton Transactions Hot Article which we have made FREE to access until the 12th January.

A covalently-linked microporous organic-inorganic hybrid framework containing polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane moieties 
Ye Peng, Teng Ben, Jun Xu, Ming Xue, Xiaofei Jing, Feng Deng, Shilun Qiu and Guangshan Zhu
Dalton Trans., 2011, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C0DT01268H, Paper