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Science Features Chemist for New Sandwich Molecule
"A number of things as we know them now wouldn't exist," said Eugenijus Urnezius, an assistant professor of chemistry at Michigan Tech. This class of compounds has been used extensively as reagents, catalysts and building blocks for new materials, including pharmaceuticals. Until now, all metallocenes have had the same basic structure: a metal atom sandwiched between two five-sided rings made of carbon and hydrogen. However, Urnezius and his colleagues have made the first carbon-free metallocene: titanium is the meat, with two five-sided rings composed of phosphorus serving as the bread. Their work was featured in the February 1, 2002, edition of Science. "All earlier attempts by other research groups to obtain similar compounds have failed, and theoretical predictions said that it probably couldn't be done," Urzenius said. "Since I'm an experimentalist, I was very pleased with the result." |
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Michigan
Tech Research 2002
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Fifty
years ago, chemists created ferrocene, the first "sandwich structure"
molecule. Today, it's hard to underestimate the role ferrocene and related
compounds, known as metallocenes, have played in shaping our modern world.