Chemistry – A European Journal, our sister journal, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. As one activity for the anniversary, they have invited authors to explain their research in a 3-minute video. The competition has ended now, and we will take a closer look at the three best videos.
Abolfazl Ghaderian completed his Ph.D. at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Tarragona, Spain, and has won the first prize with his video “Water Oxidation with Ru-bda”.
Fossil fuels are the main sources accelerating global warming. They must be replaced by cheap, clean, and sustainable energy sources to stop global warming. Water and sunlight can replace fossil fuels, and plants have been using them for billions of years. Abolfazl Ghaderian explains how water can be split into molecular oxygen, protons, and electrons by water oxidation catalysts (WOCs). The proton generated during the process can be used to produce hydrogen gas as a cheap, clean, and sustainable energy source [1,2].
Oliver Trapp, Professor of organic chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU Munich), Germany, has won the second prize with his video entitled “Soai’s Asymmetric Autocatalytic Dance”.
This stop motion video explains in an entertaining way the mechanism of Soai’s asymmetric autocatalysis via the formation of a transient hemiacetalate catalyst [3].
Ruben Van Lommel, a Ph.D. researcher at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), both Belgium, has won the third prize for his contribution entitled “Metadynamics”.
The video gives a short introduction to metadynamics. It is a technique that allows to virtually simulate the dynamics of a chemical transformation. Very descriptively Ruben Van Lommel describes in the video how this technique is used to study electrophilic aromatic substitution, a well-known but highly debated organic reaction [4].
References
- A molecular ruthenium catalyst with water-oxidation activity comparable to that of photosystem II,
Lele Duan, Fernando Bozoglian, Sukanta Mandal, Beverly Stewart, Timofei Privalov, Antoni Llobet, Licheng Sun,
Nature Chem 2012, 4, 418–423.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1301 - Behavior of Ru-bda Water-Oxidation Catalysts in Low Oxidation States,
Roc Matheu, Abolfazl Ghaderian, Laia Francàs, Petko Chernev, Mehmed Z. Ertem, Jordi Benet-Buchholz, Victor S. Batista, Michael Haumann, Carolina Gimbert-Suriñach, Xavier Sala, Antoni Llobet,
Chemistry – A European Journal 2018, 24, 12838–12847.
https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.201801236 - In Situ Mass Spectrometric and Kinetic Investigations of Soai’s Asymmetric Autocatalysis,
Oliver Trapp, Saskia Lamour, Frank Maier, Alexander F. Siegle, Kerstin Zawatzky, Bernd F. Straub,
Chemistry – A European Journal 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202003260 - Solvent and Autocatalytic Effects on the Stabilisation of the σ-Complex during Electrophilic Aromatic Chlorination,
Ruben Van Lommel, Samuel L. C. Moors, Frank De Proft,
Chemistry – A European Journal 2018, 24, 7044–7050.
https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.201800385
