Organic and Inorganic Chemistry

Module code: NT3009

In this module, you'll delve back into the world of organic and inorganic chemistry gained during the previous year.

Topics covered

• How carbon-carbon bonds can be formed from carbanions and electrophilic molecules and how this chemistry can be used in both the retrosynthetic analysis and the synthesis of organic molecules
• The structure and reactivity of amino acids and the application of this chemistry for the synthesis and structure determination of peptides
• Important conformations of alicyclic systems (especially 6-membered), their relative stability and their influence on the stereoelectronic requirements of reaction pathways
• The electronic structure of aromatic carbocycles and heterocycles and its effect upon reactivity
• Proposing effective reaction sequences to synthesise and interconvert aromatic species, many of which are used as pharmaceuticals or in the materials industry
• How structure and bonding control the outcome and selectivity of organic reaction, and how these reactions can be rationalised and predicted using mechanisms
• The methods of preparation, bonding, relative stability and reactivity of metal carbonyls, -alkyls, -carbenes, -hydrides, alkene, diene, allyl, cyclopentadienyl and benzene complexes
• Inorganic reactions regarding the basic reaction types: substitution, oxidative addition, migratory insertion, reductive elimination, salt elimination
• Spectroscopic (IR, NMR and Mass Spectrometry) microanalytical data and structural methods when characterising organometallic species
• The application of concepts of chemical kinetics to inorganic chemistry
• The importance of inorganic chemistry in catalysis and the mechanistic steps in a number of industrially important catalytic cycles