‘Holy Grail reaction’ tagged posts

Phenanthroline ligands used in the borylation of methane. Credit: IBS

Using a new hybrid breed of computational and experimental chemistry, an international team of chemists was able to solve a puzzle that has been dubbed a ‘Holy Grail reaction’ and devise a method for catalyzing reactions with methane. As organic chemistry evolved, techniques for catalyzing hydrocarbons advanced and one by one a method was created for their manipulation. Ethane, propane, butane, pentane – all the alkanes followed a similar pattern and their reactions had predictable results. Only one alkane-methane- refused to follow suit and this confounded chemists for decades. Methane had been just too difficult to work with; its C-H bond could not be manipulated...