Our ten-year-long battle with a really weird iron-hydride complex has finally come to fruition, with a paper appearing in Chemical Science. In order to sort out its dynamic behavior, Sean McWilliams performed neutron crystallography, lots of variable-temperature Mössbauer, and other studies, while our collaborators Eckhard Bill and Shengfa Ye contributed magnetic and computational analysis, respectively. And a huge amount of the insight into the crystal twinning that underlies the behavior came from Brandon Mercado, who we are so lucky to have here at Yale as a crystallographic collaborator.
A key driver behind our ultimate understanding was Eckhard, who tragically passed away just after the paper was submitted in the fall. This paper is a testament to his deep insight and fearless inquisitive spirit. We are really proud of this paper, which was recognized as a “Pick of the Week” by Chem. Sci.
