"Exploration of Earth-Abundant Transition Metals (Fe, Co, and Ni) as Catalysts in Unreactive Chemical Bond Activations" #chempaperaday 200

This is a short article on Fe, Co and Ni catalysts towards C-O, C-C and C-H activation. My purpose to read this article was to see "what is out there" and see if I can learn a few new things. I want to point out a few important (at least for me) details in this article on the characteristic behaviors of these metals. As an inorganic chemist, I enjoyed these parts the most.

Fe : Let's repeat that it is the most abundant transition metal on earth.

Co : Like iron, it is cheap and abundant. But, in these type of bond activation reactions, Co catalysis "lagged greatly."

Ni : $1/g ! Unbelievable! The congeners of Ni; Pd($183/g), Pt($483/g)! Oxidative addition of Ni(0) or Ni(I) usually goes through SET processes. And as we can see from the beautiful periodic table, Ni is more nucleophilic as expected. The authors also claim that Ni is "the best metal to induce the C-O cleaveage of various O-based nucleophiles."

There are lots of examples of bond activations and catalytic cycles in the paper. I noticed an error in one of the figures:

Also, one of the authors was born in 1991 and he is a ""third year graduate student."