snitty7 hours ago
>Move over cyclopentadiene anion—there’s a new five-membered aromatic ring in town, and this one is made of silicon.
CHEM-Es are build a little different from the rest of us.
nerdsniper5 hours ago
Chemists really. Chem-E’s basically just play IRL Factorio at work. The graphs in Factorio look almost exactly like OSI PiSoft charts, which basically every chemical plant uses.
gilleain6 hours ago
Cyclopentadiene is a great molecule - it can form 'metallocene' compounds where two cyclopentadiene (Cp) rings 'sandwich' a metal ion between them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallocene
Like Cp--M--Cp where the '--' are an unusual kind of 'bond' which is somewhat like five carbon-metal bonds, although I'm sure there is a more accurate orbital description of the interaction.
theideaofcoffee5 hours ago
The ‘--‘ is a ligand bond, a fundamental aspect of coordination and organometallic chemistry.
bonzini6 hours ago
"The average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars" (https://xkcd.com/2501)
moffkalast5 hours ago
And quartz of course.
robwwilliams5 hours ago
Perfect! I read this “heart-warming” overview of two papers in Science and learned zero about why this is of any significance. The discovery is significant but I had to probe Opus 4.6 to find out why.
The personal focus is a distraction. It would be great if science writers could focus on the science and significance of the advance.
theideaofcoffee5 hours ago
Nah, this is just a strict chemical synthesis problem, no need for the engineers yet, until you want to make ten thousand tons of the stuff.
JackFr6 hours ago
Dilithium is a real thing. Who knew?
rrr_oh_man6 hours ago
It's indispensable when dealing with self-sealing stem bolts
actionfromafar31 minutes ago
Or a lot of yamok sauce.
rbanffy7 hours ago
Any possible applications?
ultratalk7 hours ago
> Iwamoto and Scheschkewitz say pentasilacyclopentadienides could be ligands for catalysts and materials.
robwwilliams5 hours ago
The review should have expanded on this at a practical level even mom and dad could understand—the standard “better life through chemistry” angle.
frederikvs5 hours ago
Sounds like it could improve the production efficiency of glyptal-impregnated, cyanoethylated bushings for turbo-encabulators!
cubefox7 hours ago
So what was their aroma like?
snitty6 hours ago
In this case aromatic means a ring of atoms where there is electron sharing among all the members of the ring.
They're called aromatic rings because before they understood the structure, they grouped them by their behavior, and the aromatics contain a lot of volatile organics like benzene, toluene, phenol, which have strong odors.
worthless-trash6 hours ago
I like your explanation without condescension. Respect.
snittyan hour ago
moffkalast5 hours ago
So it's not volatile enough to give off a scent?
jfengel3 hours ago
Even if it were volatile, you likely wouldn't be able to smell it. The olfactory sense is complicated and weird, and targeted at organic chemistry. You can smell a few inorganic things (notably, elemental osmium, whose name literally means "smell" because that's so unusual), but your receptors are unlikely to trigger for anything that far removed.
card_zero3 hours ago
Doesn't this count as organic? Ferrocene smells of camphor, apparently. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/ferrocene
jaggederest3 hours ago
Massive molecule with a lithium salt on every silicon atom. It's not going to have basically any vapor pressure and thus effectively no aroma unless there are breakdown products
analog314 hours ago
If you know, you're probably dead.
andrewflnr5 hours ago
"Characteristic", no doubt.
YarickR26 hours ago
So, we have a chance to reduce our usage of volatile hydrocarbons. Silicon-based chemicals should not burn as easily as CH-based ones.
gus_massa6 hours ago
No, it's a super weird molecule that is big, expensive to make and probably form a solid. It can not replace solvents like benzene.
The weird structure of the electrons in the silicon cycle may be useful as a catalyst(or not, it's too early to be sure). Imagine it is like the Platinum in the car exhaust, not the solvent in the paint remover.
adrian_b6 hours ago
This particular silicon compound is unlikely to help much in that direction.
On the other hand, silicone resins and elastomers are already in widespread use in applications where resistance to high temperatures or burning is required (silicone =/= silicon, the former coming from silic-on + ket-one, a name based on a wrong hypothesis).
However, their mechanical resistance is usually modest, so if that is important they must be used either in combinations with other materials or reinforced, e.g. with glass fiber.
They are also more expensive than hydrocarbon-based plastics, so they are typically used only where strictly necessary.