A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions adds water to a tellurium-catalysed reaction a measure at a time, and charts where the catalyst gives way to its selenium analogue.
A chalcogen-bond donor keeps its pace in slightly wet solvent, then falls away across a narrow band
By adding water to a single reaction one carefully weighed measure at a time, chemists in the School of Underlying Conditions have charted how much a tellurium catalyst will tolerate before it gives up the work. How Wet Can a Tellurium Catalyst Get? is a new research poster by Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, with Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Lead of the Basement Relations Group.
We came to this from the field, where nothing is ever entirely dry, and it has been a pleasure to find that the laboratory is no different.
— Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, School of Underlying Conditions
The poster reports that the catalyst keeps almost all of its pace while the solvent stays close to dry, then loses most of it across a narrow band of water content, where a new tellurium signal appears in the spectra. Its selenium counterpart, slower from the start, declines gently and takes the lead once the solvent is wet enough. The study brings together careful bench practice, spectroscopic follow-through and a patient attention to gradation that the School has long applied to the ground beneath it.
The work sits comfortably within the School’s widening programme at the bench, which now extends its earth-science habits of description into the synthesis laboratory.
“It is good to see the questions that serve us at the core tray serving us just as well at the fume cupboard,” said Associate Professor Uzoma.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.k5c88h.