
Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium - jonbaer
http://phys.org/news/2015-04-student-powerful-catalyst-potassium.html
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lemmingapex
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikP1jiDDp6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikP1jiDDp6A)

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jedharris
The read cube link doesn't work for me.

I kind of get the weirdness of the result and the usefulness of silanes. But
nothing explains what you have to do with potassium tert-butoxide to get this
to work. That may be why some comments remark on the irritation -- no
specifics.

If I could access the paper I probably still could not understand the process
but maybe someone could translate it into lay speak.

Also the potential for new chemistry seems extremely interesting but again the
specifics are missing. I guess we are talking about the same old quantum
mechanics, so what would be new -- some larger scale effect that no one every
realized was implied by the physics? Or what?

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jedharris
OK, found a library with the subscription, and the key sentence in the paper
seems to be:

We observed that the combination of a bulky basic anion (that is, Ot-Bu,
trimethylsilanolate or bis(trimethylsilyl)amide) and, importantly, a potassium
countercation led to the desired C–Si bond formation.

But I don't understand it at all. Lay speak translation needed.

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kbetz
Hi there, I'm Kerry - one of the researchers who wrote the paper. Basically,
you have a molecule with a bunch of carbons bonded to hydrogens - like R-C-H
(where R is the rest of your molecule). Then you mix in our catalyst (K-OtBu,
the potassium tert-butoxide catalyst) and a silicon compound (let's say Si-H)
and then stir it up, and you get your final product: R-C-Si-H! A very simple
explanation for what is no doubt an extremely complex mechanism.

A bit about the specifics of that quote - so we don't know the specific way
this catalyst works, just that it works (we're working on finding it out!!)
But we've observed several important things - and one of them is that the
potassium ion in that potassium tert butoxide salt is absolutely necessary for
the reaction to go. Analagous ions like Sodium or Lithium (going up the
periodic table) don't work AT ALL. You NEED this potassium ion - which has
never been seen before in chemistry, really. You'd expect sodium and lithium
to maybe work less well, but to not work at all? Something weird's going on.

Let me know if I didn't answer your question - I can probably get a bit too
technical sometimes, habit really :(

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jedharris
That really helps. Thanks very much.

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iaw
Does anyone have insight into what type of silicon product they were creating
and it's usefulness (if any)? I'm not sure if I missed it in the article or if
it just wasn't there.

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subnaught
An organosilane is basically any molecule with a Si-C bond. This reaction step
creates the Si-C bond, so you could (in theory) use it to prepare any
organosilane by starting with the correct Si- and C- containing fragments.
Organosilanes currently find wide use in industry as hydrophobic coatings,
adhesion promoters, and as useful intermediates in drug synthesis.

It's a little hard to describe just how unbelievable this discovery is. Before
this, if you were to propose research in this area, you would most likely be
laughed at. It's a bit like if you discovered a hard drive could also be used
as a microprocessor. In both cases, there seem to be very good reasons why it
could never work. In this case, however, those reasons just happened to be
wrong.

EDIT: Free access to the original paper here:
[http://rdcu.be/cmm5](http://rdcu.be/cmm5)

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minthd
So what will happen now ? since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work,
will this start a race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to
find catalysts ?

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ekianjo
> since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work

It's not like we ever knew exactly how things work at the molecular level.
Chemistry is still an expanding field, there are theories to explain molecular
combinations in most cases but there is not fixed, absolute theory behind it
that explains everything in every single case.

> race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts

What for ? There's tons of literature already available (more than you can
absorb in a single lifetime), and experiments need to be carefully planned and
understood, and not just randomly thrown at multiple targets.

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im3w1l
>experiments need to be carefully planned and understood, and not just
randomly thrown at multiple targets.

Well, if you automated the process...

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ekianjo
> Well, if you automated the process...

Problem is, the understanding cannot be automated at this stage. Combinatorial
experiments are great to optimize an existing process, it's not that great at
finding new stuff or new insights.

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subnaught
The Caltech student newspaper interviewed some of the researchers involved:
[http://loridajose.com/?p=249](http://loridajose.com/?p=249)

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ackalker
A very inspiring story of perseverance and the ultimate payoff. I wonder if it
will take off the way the discovery and subsequent development of the
transistor (which had a similarly difficult birth process) did for
electronics.

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lesingerouge
I wonder how will this impact the rare-metal industries around the world,
especially the ones in China.

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ars
What an incredibly irritating article to read.

Can someone find a more normal article on this, that just says what the
catalyst does, and leaves out the "birthing story" and other nonsense.

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subnaught
I didn't find it irritating at all, but perhaps you would prefer this article:
[http://phys.org/news/2015-02-cheap-abundant-chemical-
outperf...](http://phys.org/news/2015-02-cheap-abundant-chemical-outperforms-
precious.html#inlRlv)

~~~
ars
Thank you!

The article is so much better I'm stunned that both are located on the same
website.

It's like finding kindergarten stories and college age stores in the same
book.

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sitharus
Not really, more like finding both in the same book store. Different audiences
like different formats, so if you can have both you get more viewers.

Personally I hate the narrative form of news reporting, I like just the facts.

