{"id":2493,"date":"2008-11-03T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T05:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/11\/nchem-research-highlights-layering-liquids-double-metallocenes-and-fixing-fingerprints.html"},"modified":"2011-12-20T11:09:01","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T11:09:01","slug":"nchem_research_highlights_laye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/11\/nchem_research_highlights_laye.html","title":{"rendered":"NChem Research Highlights: layering liquids, double metallocenes and fixing fingerprints"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Time for another dose of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/archive\/reshighlts_current_archive.html\">Research Highlights<\/a> &#8211; we scour the literature so you don&#8217;t have to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>First up, would you expect ionic liquids to separate into layers of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/reshigh\/2008\/1008\/full\/nchem.82.html\">anions and cations<\/a> on surfaces? At first glance, you&#8217;d probably think they&#8217;d mix it around to balance the charge &#8211; but not if the surface is charged, as is the case.<\/p>\n<p>Next we have some &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/reshigh\/2008\/1008\/full\/nchem.83.html\">double metallocenes<\/a>&#8217; &#8211; rather than just one Cp (or indeed Cp*) ring above and below the metal, these have two fused Cp* rings sandwiching two metals. In the 250-word article, I didn&#8217;t have space to go into the full story of the magnetic, electronic and redox properties investigated, so you&#8217;ll have to go over to <span class=\"caps\">JACS<\/span> for the details.<\/p>\n<p>Serendipity&#8230;not just a good name for a cat or a posh word for luck. Where would chemistry be without it? In this case, without a method for &#8216;fixing&#8217; fingerprints. While trying to make sulfur nitride polymers Paul Kelly and colleagues noticed that the precursor, disulfur dinitride, was so reactive that it was even reacting with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/reshigh\/2008\/1008\/full\/nchem.84.html\">fingerprints on the glassware<\/a>&#8230;and you can imagine the rest!<\/p>\n<p>Neil<\/p>\n<p>Neil Withers (Associate Editor, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\">Nature Chemistry<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time for another dose of Research Highlights \u2013 we scour the literature so you don\u2019t have to\u2026&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/11\/nchem_research_highlights_laye.html#wpn-more-2493\" class=\"more-link\"> &hellip; Read more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/11\/nchem_research_highlights_laye.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nchem-research-highlights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}