NEWS!
September 28th, 2008 by Ψ*ΨExcimer has a super-awesome paper out! You should all read it. Also, wish him luck, because his prelim is THIS MONDAY MORNING! (We all know he’ll kick ass and take names, but moral support is still appreciated, right?)
EDIT: Excimer passed with flying colors. Thanks guys for your well wishes. ~Aaron
Also, wish us happy birthday. CBC turns two on September 30th! Yay, two years! Lots of blogs don’t survive the first two weeks. Feel free to send us presents (or cake, but that probably doesn’t ship well). 
Am I the first to congratulate?
Is there a ‘blog citation rank’? By announcing the paper on this blog I’m pretty sure the times-cited of it would be dramatically boosted.
Yeah, maybe people will actually read it now.
Congrats and good luck.
Good luck with the prelim. I don’t know what those are like, but if they’re like formal group meetings, please don’t spend two and half hours doing a lit review and ten minutes of useless pictures of you manipulating PDMS. That would be bad.
Whoop whoop!
Good luck!
Good luck, go kick some ass.
I wonder if there’s a way to remove some or all of the t-butyl groups in the final molecule so you can functionalize them further. I seem to remember from my undergrad organic chemistry class that aqueous acid would remove the t-butyl cation and trap it as t-butyl alcohol. Just thinking out loud
Well, if you want the unsubstituted arene dendron, AlCl3 in benzene will transalkylate the dendron to form t-butylbenzene. Never done it before but apparently it’s a nice high-yielding reaction.
Congrats, good luck, and good job with the NMR graphics!
Good luck and congrats. And Happy Birthday to CBC. I’ve been reading since I came across it about 6 months ago. One of my favourite chemistry blogs ;¬)
awww, thanks!
Klaus Muellem would appreciate a reprint. He is really a polymer chemist who happens to also make big PAHs.
Happy birthday! Trying to think of a suitable present
Here’s a DART mass spectrum of coronene:
http://filex.jeol.com/filex/1222700155-95300/DART_MS_of_Coronene.jpg
Good luck on the prelims!
Darn — the link didn’t work. Try cutting and pasting this:
http://filex.jeol.com/filex/1222700155-95300/DART_MS_of_Coronene.jpg
With the tiny bit of benzo[ghi]perylene seen at 276, this is some of the Nazi coronene I write of in my blog. It probably comes from Aldrich’s or Fluka’s supply of that, I’d guess.
You are absolutely right. Aldrich PN 33,53505. An OLD sample in our supply cabinet. Now I want to go read your blog about this….
Interesting blog about the Nazi coronene! I looked at the rest of my spectrum, now that I knew what to look for. The ovalene peak is quite large — a few percent!
Very interesting. I’d like to see the data and discuss it more in detail. Drop me a comment at the blog.
i was HOPING you’d send an instrument…but a coronene MS is also fitting.
congratulations! LOLz all around.
There is nothing wrong with dendrimers – only with the people that are making them. Nice piece of work, though (for a material chemist).
Excimer, I am curious as these Ir – catalysed borylation look very useful – how easy is to run this reaction?
They’re dump and stir. Very easy to set up, no glove box needed, but the active catalyst is about as air-sensitive as most Pd-catalyzed reactions, and about as moisture sensitive as HBpin, so use dry solvents. THF and cyclohexane are the most common solvents- the less coordinating your solvent, the faster the reaction, so use CyH if your stuff can dissolve in it.
Iridium precatalysts are expensive, but the less active [Ir(COD)(Cl)]2 is cheaper but that doesn’t matter if you’re heating it, you form the active catalyst anyway. It’s also very air-stable (despite what Strem says) and can be easily prepared in one step from the much cheaper IrCl3.H2O. The one I use, [Ir(COD)(OMe)]2, is more air-sensitive and should be stored under inert gas when not in use, however, you can do room-temperature borylations with that precatalyst. Your catalyst loadings can be very, very low for simple arenes (~8000-16000 turnovers for most simple arenes). Bulkier ones require more catalyst but slow addition of catalyst allows for high turnover.
Oh and ignore literature reports that B2pin2 is expensive- the price as of late has plummeted because chinese chemical companies have started mass-producing the stuff (and it’s good stuff- what I use is from a company called AllyChem). HBpin is now more expensive than B2pin2. Just don’t buy B2pin2 from Aldrich- it’s a total ripoff. Frontier Scientific sells it for much cheaper.
thanks Excimer – very useful scoop. We do Suzukis here all the time so easy boronic acid access is always needed.
oh, and this is important- if you plan on using [Ir(COD)(OMe)]2, do not buy it from Alfa Aesar. It’s much cheaper there than buying it from Strem but it comes brown (ie. partially decomposed) and continues to decompose even in the glove box. Strem’s is nice and yellow and stays that way indefinitely under argon.
Congratulations Excimer! And Happy Birthday!
For your present….. here, have a “Sexy Science” striptease!
http://www.ditasdomain.com/wonderbra/
her stilettos make me want to cry! ouch ouch ouch!
That’s why all those dudes have to keep picking her up and carry her around.
How come these chicks keep getting boybands/backup dancers randomly showing up? Am I doing something wrong?
Happy Birthday:
http://www.break.com/index/ninja-cat.html
two of our favorite things
anything to ingratiate myself: kittens and ninjas, crayons and candy – its all the same to me
hahahaha I showed that at my last group meeting. That cat is teh awesome and my kitty’s new hero
Do you have DVDs for cats? My roommate in Tucson had couple of videotapes made for cats only – it was mostly the nature stuff, birds and fishes – and her two cats were watching it intently until a giant colorful fish floated right against the camera and her both cats jumped away shreaking, Very funny.
your roommate in Tucson is completely fucking insane. Just fyi.
She was feeling guilty that she never let her 2 cats out (cayotees are quite good at hunting them) and she must have though they could use some entertainment, sleeping 20 hours a day and so on.
I think her cats must have been bored because whenever I forgot to close my door they would sneek in at night and make strange noises under my bed.
This doesn’t help, but I bought one of these for my cats. I tried palying it for them twice, and they didn’t care. One of the people I knew has five cats, and they like their DVD a lot.
Apparently there are a lot of people like that. Again that doesn’t help (re:2000, 2004).
Two years and a (finished) prelim is something to celebrate – Email and I’ll send you a freebie if you like
you mean a free shirt? seriously? hell yes! you guys have some of the best sciencey t-shirts out there!
You’re too kind
Yep, email us.
I thought the only, relevant news was my new blog…
Congratulations on passing Excimer. And congratulations to both of you for keeping this thing rolling for two years!
Good job!
Congratulations on passing.
Does your cat go after table food? One of mine sort of begs but mostly just wants attention – she doesn’t actually eat anything, while the other likes lying on the table but is only interested in (food) objects if they roll.
Yeah. My cat will nom on poptarts if left out. He takes after me so well.
We usually beat the cats to those, though Masey will sniff at a poptart/generic if I’m eating one. She has no chance, though.
hey, gratz all around!
somehow I think you guys would enjoy this website:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
omg this site is so full of awesome
My favorite is the cake with (“Olympics Rings”)