Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium • Hacker News Board

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#21

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:14 AM UTC

minthd wrote: post #10

subnaught wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An organosilane is basically any molecule with a Si-C bond. This reaction step creates the Si-C bond, so you could (in theory) use it to prepare any organosilane by starting with the correct Si- and C- containing fragments. Organosilanes currently find wide use in industry as hydrophobic coatings, adhesion promoters, and as useful intermediates in drug synthesis. It's a little hard to describe just how unbelievable t…

So what will happen now ? since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work, will this start a race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts ?

> since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work

It's not like we ever knew exactly how things work at the molecular level. Chemistry is still an expanding field, there are theories to explain molecular combinations in most cases but there is not fixed, absolute theory behind it that explains everything in every single case.

> race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts

What for ? There's tons of literature already available (more than you can absorb in a single lifetime), and experiments need to be carefully planned and understood, and not just randomly thrown at multiple targets.

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#22

Post by the8472 » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:19 AM UTC

subnaught wrote: post #6

ars wrote: post #3

What an incredibly irritating article to read. Can someone find a more normal article on this, that just says what the catalyst does, and leaves out the "birthing story" and other nonsense.

I didn't find it irritating at all, but perhaps you would prefer this article: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-cheap-abundant-chemical-outperf...

That is indeed somewhat more informative. More centered around the findings and potential applications instead of telling a people-story.

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#23

Post by im3w1l » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #21

minthd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what will happen now ? since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work, will this start a race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts ?

> since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work It's not like we ever knew exactly how things work at the molecular level. Chemistry is still an expanding field, there are theories to explain molecular combinations in most cases but there is not fixed, absolute theory behind it that explains everything in every single case. > race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts What for ? Th…

>experiments need to be carefully planned and understood, and not just randomly thrown at multiple targets.

Well, if you automated the process...

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#24

Post by couchand » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:11 AM UTC

simcop2387 wrote: post #11

subnaught wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An organosilane is basically any molecule with a Si-C bond. This reaction step creates the Si-C bond, so you could (in theory) use it to prepare any organosilane by starting with the correct Si- and C- containing fragments. Organosilanes currently find wide use in industry as hydrophobic coatings, adhesion promoters, and as useful intermediates in drug synthesis. It's a little hard to describe just how unbelievable t…

Don't know if you were thinking of this with your reference, but you CAN use your hard drive as a microprocessor, even a whole new computer! https://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack

Thanks for that link, it's an interesting read. One particular story there is so great it bears posting:

"what I found was a thread from a guy called Dejan on the HDDGuru forums. Dejan had managed to corrupt the internal flash of his hard disk in some way and wanted to know if there's a way to either boot the controller from external flash, or a method to re-write the flash. For five days, he doesn't get a reponse, but the guy is inventive: the next thing he posts is the message that he has found the pinout of the JTAG-port. That's a major find: the JTAG-port can be used to control a controller like a puppet. You can stop it, restart it, modify memory, set breakpoints etc with it. Dejan then figures out how to dump the boot ROM of the controller, figures out there's a serial port on one of the hard disk headers and manages to restore his flash ROM. He then dumps a few more bits and pointers about the flash update process before finally disappearing into the mists of the Internet again. "

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#25

Post by sosuke » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:34 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #23

ekianjo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work It's not like we ever knew exactly how things work at the molecular level. Chemistry is still an expanding field, there are theories to explain molecular combinations in most cases but there is not fixed, absolute theory behind it that explains everything in every single case. > race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts What for ? Th…

>experiments need to be carefully planned and understood, and not just randomly thrown at multiple targets. Well, if you automated the process...

Makes me want to build a real life GLaDOS

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#26

Post by refurb » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:58 AM UTC

jedharris wrote: post #18

subnaught wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer the previous comment, there is no special preparation of the potassium t-butoxide necessary. The reaction itself is indeed quite simple to carry out. (In fact, this is one of the things that makes the research significant.) The achievement of the researchers was simply to find this reaction, which they did in part by paying attention to some early results that others may have not noticed or chosen to ignore…

Not being a bench chemist I have no sense of what "the reaction" is, even looking at the paper. Could you describe it?

Heteroaromatic silanes (rings made mostly of carbon but also include a non-carbon atom like nitrogen) are useful synthetic intermediates (you can use them to make other molecules).

In the past, you usually made them using precious metal catalysts (really expensive metals like rhodium; the reactions are easy to screw up). The metal atom basically inserts between the ring and a hydrogen (the outside of the rings are covered in hydrogens). You then added a silane source and it would displace the metal complex (through a pretty complex pathway) to get your desired product (the original ring with a silicon atom where a hydrogen used to be).

This new method creates the exact same product. However, instead of using a precious metal catalyst, you can just add this really common base (potassium t-butoxide) and your silicon source and "poof!" the reaction is complete. No expensive reagents!

What makes this so science-news worthy is that I don't think anyone would have guessed this would have worked.

A good analogy would be a really complex math problem. Folks can solve it, but it's a lengthy and complex proof. Suddenly someone comes by and says "just take the cosine and divide by 9" and you realize that this super simple approach works better than anything else.

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#27

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 5:02 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #23

ekianjo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since we no longer know how (some) catalysts work It's not like we ever knew exactly how things work at the molecular level. Chemistry is still an expanding field, there are theories to explain molecular combinations in most cases but there is not fixed, absolute theory behind it that explains everything in every single case. > race of scanning materials(i.e. combinatorial chemistry) to find catalysts What for ? Th…

>experiments need to be carefully planned and understood, and not just randomly thrown at multiple targets. Well, if you automated the process...

> Well, if you automated the process...

Problem is, the understanding cannot be automated at this stage. Combinatorial experiments are great to optimize an existing process, it's not that great at finding new stuff or new insights.

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#28

Post by lesingerouge » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 5:51 AM UTC

I wonder how will this impact the rare-metal industries around the world, especially the ones in China.

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#29

Post by kbetz » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 6:43 AM UTC

jedharris wrote: post #15

jedharris wrote: post #13

The read cube link doesn't work for me. I kind of get the weirdness of the result and the usefulness of silanes. But nothing explains what you have to do with potassium tert-butoxide to get this to work. That may be why some comments remark on the irritation -- no specifics. If I could access the paper I probably still could not understand the process but maybe someone could translate it into lay speak. Also the pote…

OK, found a library with the subscription, and the key sentence in the paper seems to be: We observed that the combination of a bulky basic anion (that is, Ot-Bu, trimethylsilanolate or bis(trimethylsilyl)amide) and, importantly, a potassium countercation led to the desired C–Si bond formation. But I don't understand it at all. Lay speak translation needed.

Hi there, I'm Kerry - one of the researchers who wrote the paper. Basically, you have a molecule with a bunch of carbons bonded to hydrogens - like R-C-H (where R is the rest of your molecule). Then you mix in our catalyst (K-OtBu, the potassium tert-butoxide catalyst) and a silicon compound (let's say Si-H) and then stir it up, and you get your final product: R-C-Si-H! A very simple explanation for what is no doubt an extremely complex mechanism.

A bit about the specifics of that quote - so we don't know the specific way this catalyst works, just that it works (we're working on finding it out!!) But we've observed several important things - and one of them is that the potassium ion in that potassium tert butoxide salt is absolutely necessary for the reaction to go. Analagous ions like Sodium or Lithium (going up the periodic table) don't work AT ALL. You NEED this potassium ion - which has never been seen before in chemistry, really. You'd expect sodium and lithium to maybe work less well, but to not work at all? Something weird's going on.

Let me know if I didn't answer your question - I can probably get a bit too technical sometimes, habit really :(

Re: Student creates powerful catalyst from potassium

#30

Post by ackalker » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 6:47 AM UTC

A very inspiring story of perseverance and the ultimate payoff. I wonder if it will take off the way the discovery and subsequent development of the transistor (which had a similarly difficult birth process) did for electronics.