Carroll Lab Publishes Article in Polyhedron
Congratulations are in order for Dr. Maria Carroll’s team of PC undergraduate researchers for the publication of their first paper! The article entitled “Iron tricarbonyl α-diimine complexes: Synthesis, characterization, and electronic structure based on X-ray crystal structures” was published in the July 15 issue of Polyhedron, a leading journal in inorganic chemistry. In this article, the all-female team in the Carroll Lab describes the synthesis and characterization of iron tricarbonyl alpha-diimine complexes. These metal complexes are potentially useful for chemical reactions involving oxidation-reduction, including some related to energy storage and climate change.
Coordination complexes like those synthesized by Dr. Carroll’s team of PC undergraduates contain redox active ligands. The substituent groups on the ligands can be readily tuned to specific electronic and steric environments, which can have large impacts on the reduction potential of the iron tricarbonyl complex. Dr. Carroll’s group synthesized these iron complexes in the laboratory using air-free techniques. Many of the complexes were crystallized and X-ray diffraction was used to determine their structure and geometry. The complexes were further characterized using cyclic voltammetry in order to establish a structure-activity relationship between the redox active ligand and the reduction potential. One major conclusion is that these complexes are best described as radical anionic ligands bound to an iron(I) center. Congrats to Dr. Carroll and her students!
