We are gratified that the U.S. Department of Energy has chosen to fund our project “Tandem Catalytic C-H Activation and N₂ Activation Using Iron Complexes.” This grant, starting Sept. 1, will support Sam’s continued work on a project started by Sean and Danny, which uses atmospheric N₂ to form organic compounds. Onward and upward!

Two excellent papers on Dan DeRosha’s work with new iron-sulfide clusters are now coming out in the literature. One (in Inorganic Chemistry) describes a new two-iron cluster that serves as a precursor to a variety of cluster shapes, including an unusual 10-iron cluster. The other (in Nature Chemistry) gives details on one of the product cluster types, which has a flat 4-iron shape that is new in iron chemistry. This unusual shape leads the central Fe site to have only three bonds but have a low-spin electronic configuration, which defies simple expectations but can be understood using spectroscopic and computational contributions from our collaborators Serena DeBeer, Frank Neese, and Eckhard Bill. This cluster is also capable of breaking N-N bonds in hydrazine, which mimics one activity of nitrogenase. A real tour de force!

Congratulations to DK on the appearance of his new paper on the mechanisms of alkene cross-coupling reactions, which was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. This paper was a substantial achievement that was the fruit of a lot of careful thinking and experimentation, combined with computations by our collaborator Rinaldo Poli from Toulouse, France. In addition, Sam’s Minireview of N-N bond splitting chemistry appeared in Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. Great job, Sam!

Our NIH grant proposal on Fe-catalyzed HAT (hydrogen atom transfer) alkene reactions was funded by the NIH. Congratulations to DK, Conner, and Josef, whose hard work and careful editing made the grant proposal great. Onward and upward!