Tampon capsules anyone?

Probably the weirdest reagent that I've come across so far...

Internet searches still have not yielded what this general purpose grade reagent is used for...

What the Heck?

OK, so that wasn't the wittiest of titles I could've come up with. But in my defence, it's half nine in the p.m., and here I am in the lab, all on my lonesome and waiting for a TLC to complete so that I can decide if I should chuck in more reagents or just go home...

I haven't been posting much recently as things haven't really been working - these days I've been trying to synthesise a radical trap which I've not so lovingly dubbed "the bomb", not so lovingly since it refuses to be made.

At this moment in time, I'm attempting a Heck reaction. I say attempt, because every time I've tried a Heck reaction before, it's failed.

Once again, it went black...

Maybe I should stop being so surprised when a reaction involving palladium in it goes black.

My mini work-up pre TLC

In the time it's taken me to write this, my TLC has now completed and it looks like I do indeed have something that could very possibly be the product...dundundun! But let's not breathe yet - I should run a crude NMR just to verify.

Or, I could just go home and eat/drink/sleep.

Peace out, organics x

DIY Lab Equipment

Happy new year!

So, when your lab can't afford fancy equipment and columns with unbroken taps are a luxury, one must hoard hoard hoard, and failing that, one must improvise.

I've become particularly fond of a short, fat column, but as my Master's supervisor says, long and thin is better than short and fat and after using it several times, I've grown a little tired of having to refill the solvent every four fractions. Since we don't seem to have any reservoirs here in the projects, I decided to make my own...

A dropping funnel on top of the column as a reservoir...pretty neat! This worked like a charm, and was one of the fastest columns that I've run so far, with my compound coming off on the 3rd fraction! Of course we ran out of dry ice so I haven't been able to vac off the solvent any quicker than ghetto style, i.e. open air, which sucks as it's screwing up with my projected schedules grrr.

Some other creative DIY lab equipment techniques I picked up from back in the day include:

* Stacking glass pipettes into each other to make a glass rod for stirring those long pesky measuring cylinders
* Using Gilson pipette tips as TLC spotters, some of the Masters students here make theirs from snapping off the tips of syringe needles
* Connecting an inverted syringe needle to an air tap via tubing and paraffin tape in order to dry NMR tubes
* Sticking a syring needle into a rubber subaseal and using it to connect a vial to the rotor vap in order to vac off small amounts of solvent (risky as the vials aren't made to withstand vacuums!)

And who says that chemists aren't creative! Let me know if you have any other pieces of DIY wisdom to share!

When things go bang!

Recently, the temperature in our lab has been pretty arctic, and I'm not even sure if it's legal for us to be working under these conditions. Not that anyone is actually going to stop coming in. Anyway, after a series of complaints, we finally had a guy coming round to fix the heating so today, we were greeted by a more tepid climate.

Of course, one of the basic theories they teach in GCSE Physics and Chemistry is particle theory i.e. that a gas expands upon heating on account of the molecules possessing more kinetic energy from the increase in temperature. We finally got a chance to see this in action today, when I kid you not, one of the solvent bottles exploded with a bang, sending shards of glass flying and knocking other bottles to the ground.

Given my response of "oh", this all sounds much more dramatic than it actually was.

The worrying thing is that instead of springing into action and cleaning it up, everyone gathered around to stare at the pool of acetone spreading across the ground, violating every single health and safety code of conduct out there. I shudder to think what would happen in a real emergency.

Anyway, this was all forgotten in the wake of the much more important email announcement: PAYDAY!

So of course I went out to Soho and spent an obscene fraction of it on celebratory cocktails.

Awww yeah.

When you find a paper disproving your work

The moment when you come across a paper telling you that what you are trying to do will never work.

And that there is no point in even trying to defy the laws of chemistry.

You swallow sadness.

As it's six o'clock, you give up, go home, and order a consolation pizza.

Good thing the pizza requires no plates.

Sonogash

Normally, when carrying out a new reaction, it's good practice to do a small scale test reaction first to see if it'll work or not. But in a fit of madness I went against the convention by going in with all or nothing. After all, fortune is supposed to favour the brave, right?

The reaction in question: the Sonogashira a.k.a Sonogash, a classic textbook metal cross coupling reaction done neat with PdCl2(PPh3)4, Cu(I)I and NEt3. In lectures, we learned about the mechanisms of the catalytic cycle, but what we didn't cover was how this reaction was done experimentally.

Does it need to be anhydrous? was my first question, and a quick search online indicated that yes, this reaction is typically done under anhydrous and anaerobic conditions but that recently conditions had been developed in which this was not so important. Err, more detail please? 

A Reaxys search for various preps didn't really help either, and since my NEt3 was more than likely to be wet, I decided to just chuck it all into the RBF, Argon the hell out of it anyway and pray to the gods of chemistry. A deep burgundy colour indicated that perhaps my prayers had been answered, but then I freaked out a little (a lot) when my reaction went black. No one had prepared me for this!

Later, I found out that It Was Fine, that in this case, black was good.

Looks like my copper got oxidised to Cu(II), and I don't know why!

Anyways, to jump to the end of the story: it worked! Awww yeahhhhhh.

For Science!

This week, so far...

- I stabbed myself with a contaminated needle containing deuterated chloroform and TMS-butadiyne. The fact that I'm still alive doesn't mean much, since it does not rule out the possibility of a slow and agonizing death.

- The lab reached a record low of fourteen degrees. After the RSC "How hot is your chemistry?" paper thermometer hit the baseline temperature in my room at home, baseline being twelve degrees, we finally decided to turn on the heating. This illustrates a very simple solution to the problem. Needless to say, the Arctic wasteland that is the lab has not yet been thawed.

- I endured the awkward moment when you fall asleep in a seminar during a (relatively) fit academic's talk about his research in developing drugs to fight kitty cat HIV. It only got awkward when the PI decided to show the academic around the lab afterwards. I can only compare the moment to a deer in headlights.

- It has finally become acceptable for radio stations nationwide to play Christmas songs, if it means that Adele's Skyfall will now only air once instead of twice a day.

- Two of my reactions gave me the right products!!

- Last night, in a fit of madness and/or inspiration, I made an ice bowl on the rotorvap. This is what happens when I'm left to my own devices:

FOR SCIENCE!

On a completely unrelated note, I'm totally digging this Olly Murs vs. Britney Spears vs. Maroon 5 mashup, and so should you: