Does anyone know about a good book on the chemistry fo organometallics? I'd appreciate the title or if it's an e-book, the link fluorescence - 30-8-2015 at 05:21
We had some organometallics recently since my organic chemistry prof has his fields of research on
organometallics. I thought I'd prepare some stuff and looked into some books and it didn't really help me.
It depends on what you are looking for. Many books have so many mistakes that simply haven't been corrected
in years, we looked at some examples there and so I think it really takes some books and a lot of comparison to fully understand the whole potential
of organometallics. In Terms of selectivity and reactivity you can design so many catalysts and compounds and there is some stuff you can look into
like the Pearson-Concept and stuff like that. I can look for the name of the book I used I dont remember the name now, that was quite good and
explained advanteges of using diferent compounds.
So for "how do you make a reaction" you can use quite many books but if you are looking for "why does it work like this" you will have to compare
books. I'd really love to encourage you to look into this stuff and not just look for a specific reaction.
We had a funny experiment when we had some highschool students as guests and asked them how they would design a certain catalyst depending on their
school chemistry knowledge and managed to fully reproduce the idea of a former (nobel ?)prize winner.
So many of the reactions in organometallics can be broken down to basic OC Knowledge and stuff like I said the Pearson Concept of hard and soft acids
and bases. And many books do not focus on stuff like that. They just skip through the reactions and don't really show why and how it works.
Really interesting topic, I'd love to hear more about it but even at universities there is not much stuff about it.
Edit:
Okay sorry I already brought the book back to the library but I will look for the name the next time I'm there. What you can try, too is to look into
some university scripts. The sum up important facts from many books and it is filtered and adapted for the knowledge a student has. Might be easier to
understand and based on simple concepts. Just look for organomatallics or specific stuff and add a "filetype:pdf" in google that should give you many
scripts.
[Edited on 30-8-2015 by fluorescence]BromicAcid - 30-8-2015 at 06:23
Here is an older paper that I posted sometime back:
It is a decent high-level overview of the field at the time (1950s) as fluorescence said above, older texts tend to contain a bit of information that
has since been disproven, but they still act as a good starting point. If you're looking to do chemistry involving organometallics at home though,
stuff from the 50's is a prime source of fun.
In terms of actual books, Principles of Organometallic Chemistry by G. E. Coates was one of the first texts that I read on the subject and is still a
good (accessible) source, plus you can pick up used copies on the cheap. What I have found though, is that the field is very focused, an overview
book like the one by Coates is not going to cut it if you were say, interested in organoaluminum chemistry. It's only going to have a taste of that.
So, is there a specific aspect of organometallic chemistry you are interested in? At one time I just wanted to learn everything on the subject and
went to betterworld books and bought every book they had under $10 with organometallic in the title. This included quite a few very... very...
very... dull books. Hopefully this thread will help you avoid that.
Quote:
So many of the reactions in organometallics can be broken down to basic OC Knowledge and stuff like I said the Pearson Concept of hard and soft acids
and bases. And many books do not focus on stuff like that. They just skip through the reactions and don't really show why and how it works.
Interestingly enough I just purchased Pearson's most recent book on the subject: Chemical Hardness: Applications from Molecules to Solids. Like you,
I feel the 'why' part of the equation in a reaction is often overlooked. However I would not recommend this book, it is much too focused on the
details of the HSAB, much too many theoretical calculations, computer simulations, and just overall too focused on specific aspects of the theory to
see how it would all come together in your mind.Kagutsuchi - 30-8-2015 at 06:43
Thank you very much. I am in the same state you were in some time ago, I want to learn everything that's possible on this subject. The more Chemistry
I know, the better it is. I am not a millionaire, so I won't buy all the books
that had organometallics in its title, but I am searching for papers on all the metals one-by-one
EDIT: I have found an interesting series of books called "Topics of organometallic chemistry". do you know anything about that?
[Edited on 30-8-2015 by Kagutsuchi]fluorescence - 30-8-2015 at 07:00
Well it's kinda hard for me to say as an inorganic chemist but the HSAB Concept isn't that great either. It's really good to argument with it but you
shouldn't really start all basic thoughts and asumptions with HSAB. It's usually better to argument with other effects especially in organic chemistry
and then look at pearson to have like a fine adjustement to your idea.
In our lectures many people usually answered with HSAB although there were other effects and it is always easy just pointing at a reaction and
classify all components to the HASB concept. It's true, reactions happen and there are certain stabities that can be predicted with HSAB but I think
many reactions that just happen will more or less automatically obey HSAB which does not mean that you can use it for every new Idea. It's the other
way around about organometallics.
If they argument with it, I'd read the book simply because they care about basic ideas and try to explain with them.
If you are looking for literature I'd take books where certain comparisons are mentioned. One example I can just think of is the reaction of
organolithium in comparison to organocopper. Both of them have a very interesting chemistry but they differ in certain reactions like one does
1,2-Reactions and the other one 1,4. And there was a quite good explanation to why this is the case in the book I am looking for and I think there
were some arguments with pearson but I am not sure it's been a couple of months now.
Another fact is starting from Grignard Reaction towards diferent metals like Zinc or Calcium. Or starting with stuff like Hydroboration which is just
a way of getting an organoboron compound if you start from an Alkene or Alkine. So why stop here, wouldn't Aluminium have a similar reaction ?
Wouldn't many other organometallic compounds add to a double bond the same way and cause a similar reaction ? These are just basic thoughts. If you
find books where this is mentioned I'd really read it.
Those thoughts are so important if you want to understand organometallics and they start with simple OC reactions you usually learn.
AvBaeyer - 30-8-2015 at 18:47
Kagutsuchi,
As stated above, there probably is not any single book which will cover the broad and ever growing topic of organometallic chemistry. However, if you
go to the abe.com book site and and type in "organometallic chemistry" as the keywords, you will be inundated with hits. It looks like for about
$100.00 or so you could build a substantial library which would cover a good part of the area. Give it a shot and see what you think.
