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Henry Rzepa's Blog

Henry Rzepa's Blog
Chemistry with a twist
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Chemical ITChemical Sciences
Published

The number of repositories which accept research data across a wide spectrum of disciplines is on the up. Here I report the results of conducting an experiment in which chemical modelling data was deposited in six such repositories and comparing the richness of the metadata describing the essential properties of the six depositions. The repositories are as follows: Figshare as a repository dates from 2012.

Chemical ITChemical Sciences
Published

You might have noticed if you have read any of my posts here is that many of them have been accompanied since 2006 by supporting calculations, normally based on density functional theory (DFT) and these calculations are accompanied by a persistent identifier pointer to a data repository publication.

Crystal_structure_miningInteresting ChemistryChemical Sciences
Published

An earlier post investigated large anomeric effects involving two oxygen atoms attached to a common carbon atom. A variation is to replace one oxygen by a nitrogen atom, as in N-C-O. Shown below is a scatter plot of the two distances to the common carbon atom derived from crystal structures. You can see some entries for which the C-O bond length is shorter than normal and the C-N distance very much longer than normal;

Crystal_structure_miningInteresting ChemistryChemical Sciences
Published

Whilst I was discussing the future of scientific publication in the last post, a debate was happening behind the scenes regarding the small molecule cyclopropenylidene. This is the smallest known molecule displaying π-aromaticity, but its high reactivity means that it is unlikely to be isolated in the condensed phase.

Curly ArrowsReaction MechanismChemical Sciences
Published

In another post, a discussion arose about whether it might be possible to trap cyclopropenylidene to form a small molecule with a large dipole moment. Doing so assumes that cyclopropenylidene has a sufficiently long lifetime to so react, before it does so with itself to e.g. dimerise.

Crystal_structure_miningChemical Sciences
Published

The classic anomeric effect operates across a carbon atom attached to oxygens. One (of the two) lone pairs on the oxygen can donate into the σ* orbital of the C-O of the other oxygen ( e.g. the red arrows) tending to weaken that bond whilst strengthening the donor oxygen C-O bond. Vice versa means e.g. the blue arrows weakening the other C-O bond.

Interesting ChemistryChemical Sciences
Published

From the last few posts here, you might have noticed much discussion about how the element carbon might sustain a quadruple bond. The original post on this topic from some years ago showed the molecular orbitals of the species CN + , which included two bonding π-types and a low lying nodeless bonding σ-orbital, all with double occupancies and adding up to a triple bond.