Achievement

William Green has managed to prepare a series of monovalent nickel complexes using trispyrazolylborates as supporting ligands. Monovalent nickel is very reactive (especially towards oxygen) and there are relatively few ligand systems that have proven capable of supporting this less common oxidation state. William is the first one to prepare such complexes using trispyrazolylborate ligands. In addition, these new monovalent nickel complexes can activate dioxygen to form O2 adducts. He has isolated and structurally characterized one such adduct, a nickel-superoxide complex, which is stable in air and at room temperature. In the literature, there are very few examples of Ni-superoxide compounds and, of those that do exist, fewer are stable at room temperature. Such superoxide complexes, in addition to being quite rare and, therefore interesting from an academic standpoint, are also possible intermediates in hypothetical catalyic systems designed to split water using nickel complexes.