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Inside Cover: New Concepts for Designing d 10 ‐M(L) n Catalysts: d Regime, s Regime and Intrinsic Bite‐Angle Flexibility (Chem. Eur. J. 36/2014)
Author(s) -
Wolters Lando P.,
van Zeist WillemJan,
Bickelhaupt F. Matthias
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201490151
Subject(s) - catalysis , flexibility (engineering) , lever , work (physics) , cover (algebra) , ligand (biochemistry) , electronic structure , physics , materials science , chemistry , nanotechnology , condensed matter physics , quantum mechanics , mathematics , engineering , mechanical engineering , statistics , biochemistry , receptor
Pull the right lever! Often, catalyst activity does not respond to ligand tuning as expected. In their Full Paper on page 11370 ff., F. M. Bickelhaupt et al. show why this is so, based on electronic‐structure and activation strain analyses of dozens of CH bond activation reactions. The ligand may very well do its trick to the metal electronic structure. However, if the catalyst complex is in a different electronic regime, this has no effect. This is like shifting the switch in the right direction when the train runs on a different track (see illustration). In the course of this work, new concepts for catalyst design are proposed, such as, d‐regime catalysts, s‐regime catalysts, and bite‐angle flexibility.