Cooperated with Prof. Lai-Sheng Wang's research group of Department of Chemistry, Brown University, Prof. Jun Li and his coworker of the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University recently published a paper named "Probing the nature of gold–carbon bonding in gold–alkynyl complexes" in Nature Communications.
The researchers used combined photoelectron spectroscopy and relativistic quantum chemical calculations to investigate and analyze the bonding between gold and carbonin gold-alkynyl complexes. Their high-level ab initio calculations discovered a rare inverse correlation between bond order and bond strength. "The strong gold–carbon bond underlies the catalytic aptness of gold complexes for the facile formation of terminal alkynyl–gold intermediates and activation of carbon–carbon triple bond", as the authors said.
ACS Journal Chemical & Engineering News reported this work with the title Probing Gold's Catalytic Prowess, pointing out the importance of this work for understanding the mechanism of catalytic intermediates.
For more, please visit:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130726/ncomms3223/full/ncomms3223.html
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i33/Probing-Golds-Catalytic-Prowess.html
