News & Events

The Close and Loose Relationship Between Carbon and Phosphorus

Date: 
Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - 17:00 to 18:00
Speaker: 
Professor Manfred Scheer
Affiliation: 
Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Regensburg
Event Category: 
IDG - Inorganic Discussion Group
Host: 
Derek Gates
Location: 
Chemistry D300

IDG seminars will be held in D300 and also available on zoom this term. Please contact for zoom details.

Polyphosphorus units are an important class of compound and isolobal to carbon-based relatives. Because of the lone pairs at the phosphorus atoms, the five-fold symmetric cyclo-P5 ring of the pentaphosphaferrocenes [CpRFe(η5-P5)] enables the use of these complexes in unique supramolecular aggregations with Lewis acidic transition metal moieties to form unprecedented giant spherical molecules (Figure 1, left).1 Moreover, they represent sandwich complexes with a flexible redox2 and substitution behavior3 (Figure 1, right-top and center), different from the one of the carbon-based analogue ferrocene. The talk will compare similarities and differences between P- and C-based compounds and show some advantages of the former ones. Furthermore, the use of alternative reagents4 to synthesize such powerful starting materials of polypnictogen complexes and other surprising compounds will be presented (Figure 1, right bottom).5


Figure 1. Versatile reactivity of [CpRFe(η5-P5)]: left) giant supramolecular sphere; right top) redox reactions; center bottom) product of a nucleophilic attack; right bottom) arsa-sila-benzene
(1) C. Heindl, E. V. Peresypkina, A. V. Virovets, W. Kremer, M. Scheer, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 10938.
(2) M. V. Butovskiy, G. Balázs, M. Bodensteiner, E. V. Peresypkina, A. V. Virovets, J. Sutter, M. Scheer, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 2972.
(3) S. Reichl, E. Mädl, F. Riedelberger, M. Piesch, G. Balázs, M. Seidl, M. Scheer, Nat. Commun. 2021, 12, 5774.
(4) V. Heinl, A. E. Seitz, G. Balázs, M. Seidl, M. Scheer, Chem. Sci. 2021, 12, 9726-9732.
(5) A. E. Seitz, M. Eckhardt, A. Erlebach, E. Peresypkina, M. Sierka, M. Scheer, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 10433.