Talk:Scorpionate ligand

The article as of Feb 12, 2006 looks like an attempt at vanity publishing, i.e. the presentation is not balanced and appears to be constructed from a set of images from a small set of researcher vs. an attempt to give a broad perspective or history or coordination chemistry. The structural drawings, while appealing, do not convey the information of a simpler ChemDraw. The presentation contains some wonderful, if highly specialized, examples of coordination compounds.Smokefoot 02:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Dear Smokefoot,

I added the crystal strucutre diagrams of a series of Tm complexes, the idea is quite new and I have found that with the high coordination numbers found in coordination chemistry that chemdraw diagrams are oftein not very clear. It is possible to draw such diagrams but they are oftein require a lot of organometallic shorthand to make them reasonable drawings. Also the chemdraw diagram is flat, the POVRay diagrams made using ORTEP to write POV files are drawn in perspective (they are as close to 3D as it is possible to be on a flat screen).

I can add more diagrams on the older Tp ligands, I have already included a few diagrams of Tp complexes.Cadmium 21:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

"Since its inception until now, there have been about 2000 papers published on polypyrazolylborates, and complexes of seventy elements of the periodic table have been reported." S. Trofimenko. The question - does the present scorpionate article present a balanced overview of the status and history of the field? Really?--Smokefoot 14:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Smokefoot, I agree that the page is not the perfect page yet, it needs more to be written.Cadmium 20:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

"Key to understanding"
Me again: Your new (now slightly edited) entry: "[MnBr(CO)5] with KTp to form [MnTp(CO)3]. This is a compound which is key to our understanding of the scorpionates becuase examples of it with Cp, Tp, Tm and the thia-crown are known." The phrase "key to our understanding" sounds good but no follow-up is presented to show how (or even if) this factoid contributes to our understanding. Do you mean that one can compare nu(CO) or is there some deeper concept that you are hinting at but dont want to disclose? This kind of phrasing drives students nuts, and I plead guilty in former times to using it leading to many complaints from my more thoughtful readers.--Smokefoot 14:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, fair cop. I should have written more to exaplin why the compound IMHO is so important. I think that a series of compounds which only varry in one way (where a spectroscopic measurement can reveal the fine details of the metal centre) are very important in chemistry. I might be biased as I have published some work in which a range of ligands (not scorpionates) are all converted into a set of analogus complexes. Cadmium


 * Yes, publishing in an area is detrimental to NPOV; I confess to the same problem, which makes me extremely sensitive to non-NPOV in chemistry reports. Getting back to business:

Most importantly to readers - what is the scope of this article??? It begins with the comment
 * "Scorpionate ligands, are representatives of tridentate ligands that are more precisely members of the polypyrazolylborate ligands."
 * which could be condensed to
 * "Scorpionates are members of the polypyrazolylborate family of ligands."
 * Why not be precise? Otherwise readers and students become sloppy thinkers.  Further on one finds the statement  "Many other chemists to continue exploring the possibilities of scorpionate ligand alternatives, such as:"  which is it - tripyrazolyl borates or the "other possibilities"?  IMHO, article scope must be crystal clear.  The contents cannot be defined by the "ligands I find kinda nifty" which seems to be the spirit of the current report.  Imidazoles are not pyrazoles, nor is pyridine, 9-ane-S3, Cp, etc.    Possibly a whole lot of material should be shifted and used as the basis of a separate article on face-capping ligands.--Smokefoot 16:46, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Cadmium: don't forget to put in the part where you explain the "key to understanding" because am still dying to know. For example you now say by way of explanation: "This is becuase.." what exactly is "this" and you continue "other than the nature of the scorpionate ligand the complexes are identical, it is the case that using solution state IR spectrscopy that it is possible to use the carbonyl stretching frequencies as a measure of the electron density on the metal, the electron density in turn is controlled by the ligands." I am looking for the "key". You might considering turning on your BS detector.

The following part is off-topic (just random factoid): "It is important to note that solid state infra-red spectrscopy can be complicated by the existance of more than one crystal form (A good example being the ruthenium complex [RuHCl(CO)(PPh3)3] which has a pink and a yellow form which have different IR spectra)." This article is not supposed to be an exercize in stream of consciousness writing.--Smokefoot 18:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The BS detector has been turned back on, I confess that the Key to understanding is an overstatement which I am going to remove. I have got stuck into the start of the article (BTW which I did not write). One thing, you are oftein keen to complain about the Scorpionate ligands page in terms of what chemistry (I think that you think that the page has gone too organometallic) but I am not going to stop you adding content if you want to add something from another area of coordination chemistry which might make the article more balenced.

I think that the page must not become a Tp page devoted to one ligand class only, I think that Tm, tripodal triphosphines and goodness knows what other tripodal ligands all have as good a clain to be scorpionate ligands. So I think we should put something on each class. I have added two short sections about P donors towards the end.Cadmium
 * Thanks, but remind me of what a scorpionate ligand is? You continue to avoid answering that question. Or, where does the scope of this article stop? Klaui? TACN, 9-ane-S3, a zillion triamines,  a dozen triphophines,  Schrock-Cummins, triols, RB(SCH2SR)3, three-fold hollow sites, ...  Given your obviously deep knowledge and first-hand experience, possibly you could borrow most of the content from this amorphous report for a very powerful article focused (more appropriately IMHO) on "tripodal ligands".  WE lacks broader discussions of ligands so your new article would be well rec'd and would probably set a trend for many others to follow.  Again, this problem would not arise if scorpionate were defined carefully.   I think that you need to take the leap and start "tripodal ligands".   Look at ligand! WE's in the Stone Ages still.  Hey, it was fun chatting and I offer best wishes, I am getting back to the real world.--Smokefoot 20:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I am sure that I have defined today the meaning of scorpionate ligand, I think that Tp is a scorpionate in the same way as a west highland terrier is a dog. In the same way as not all dogs are westies not all scorpionates are Tp ligands.

I think that maybe you know more than you credit yourself with knowing, I only know some of the ligands which you mention

Klaui What is it?

TACN What is it?,

9-ane-S3 added already

triamines Yes I know about these,

triphosphines added already,

Schrock-Cummins What is it?

triols Yes I bet it would bind well to an oxophilic metal such as Ti

RB(SCH2SR)3 Yes I know about these, but I have not thought of them

Cadmium 21:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

What is a fac manner?
First of all I want to tell, that I'm from germany and unfortunately I don't understand everything written in this article.

I did a practica were I used a lot of Tp Nickel complexes and I have to write a report about it in english. This articel doesn't exist in german but I think that's a good fact to write about. So my question is: What is a fac manner? I really don't understand that word and it would be great if someone could explain it to me (please, for me it's very important to know the meaning of this word!).... --Martina2504 (talk) 14:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Fac: Face Mer: Meridien

For example, Octahedral_molecular_geometry. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 14:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Might need a whole rewrite
17 years later, and it's still not clear either what the topic of this page is or what specifically a scorpionate is. If it's just an application of trispyrazolylborate-type structures, then say that directly. If it's a broader class, of which those were the origins, say that directly. What's the generality now: tris"heterocycle"borates? By the time we get to §Other, it's nearly generalized to any fac-tridentate, and even hexadentate. DMacks (talk) 11:56, 23 March 2023 (UTC)