"there is no such thing as 'the reaction did not work'" #chempaperaday 307

The quote is from Prof. Murillo who is the author of this paper. For those who don't know him well, he worked with Al Cotton and is also the co-author of "Multiple Bonds Between Metal Atoms". This paper is a short summary of some successful and unsuccessful attempts to isolate divalent metal-metal bonded early transition complexes. It is very difficult! I love the conclusion. People often give up after sometimes only one (1) attempt! First of all, I don't consider one attempt as a real attempt. There is still a good chance after a few attempts, you may get what you want. Secondly, it is also important to know WHY it is failing. You can isolate something unexpected but something much more important than your initial goal. Third, without failure, you can't learn.

Sterically Encumbered Metalla-diphosphines: Unlocking Alkyne Rotation by PtII Coordination #chempaperaday 306

If you read this post, you shouldn't be surprised to see they used the tungsten compund to make bimetallic complexes. I mean they even mentioned it in the paper as far as I can remember. So here we go, probably the first of the series of biemtallic complexes. Depending on the alkyne substituents, they can tune the redox potentials as expected. The real interesting part is that alkyne can rotate in this bimetallic complex while it is not observed for the tungsten compound. I like this group's work. Looking forward to the next paper.

 

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2017/DT/C7DT01803G#!divAbstract