|
Vol.
25 No. 2 March-April 2003
Coordination
Chemistry
by Franc Meyer, translated from
German to English by Katja Heinze
From 21-26 July 2002, the International Conference
on Coordination Chemistry (ICCC) took place in Heidelberg,
Germany. More than 1100 chemists from 57 nations traveled to
the scientific metropolis at the Neckar river to report on and
discuss the latest progress in coordination chemistry in 223
lectures and 768 poster presentations.
Since 1950, the ICCC, which usually takes place
biannually, has been the central meeting of coordination
chemists from all over the world. This year, the 35th
conference in the series was brought to Germany for the third
time–after Hamburg (1976) and Gera (1990). There was
overwhelming interest in the conference, but limitations in
the size of the venue prevented a much larger number of
participants. The up-to-date and attractive conference program
was compiled by the organizing committee of Gottfried Huttner,
Elisabeth Kaifer and Roland Krämer.
The diversity of modern coordination chemistry today
and the evolution of coordination chemistry into a link
between different fields of modern chemistry was impressively
demonstrated. Whether bioinorganic chemistry, molecular
precursors for novel materials, supramolecular chemistry, or
homogeneous metal catalysis–coordination units constitute the
fundamental building blocks. Accordingly, the excellent
plenary lectures covered all the topics of modern coordination
chemistry. Itamar Willner (Jerusalem) gave an account on the
development of functional nanostructures elaborately composed
of coordination units, biopolymers, and surfaces to construct
modules of electronic, electrocatalytic, and optoelectronic
devices. Dante Gatteschi (Florence) elucidated the strategies
for achieving and understanding high magnetic anisotropies in
single molecules–anisotropy is the fundamental prerequisite
for molecular magnetism and a thorough understanding is
necessary for the improvement of magnetic properties and for
future application in nanomagnets. The fact that the mechanism
of metallocen- catalyzed olefin polymerization can be
conceived only if the so-far neglected "non-coordinating"
counter anions are also taken into account, was demonstrated
by Hans H. Brintzinger (Konstanz). The awarding of the
Wilkinson prize to Achim M ller (Bielefeld) was doubtlessly a
highlight, as well as the impressive lecture given by the
laureate, in which he showed the controlled construction,
transformation, nesting, and combination of giant molecular
polyoxometallate balls, disks, and rings with up to 264 metal
atoms–coordination chemistry in a novel dimension.
Finally, J. H. Clark (London) entertained the audience
with his colorful presentation about analysis of inorganic
pigments used in arts. Raman microscopy not only allows the
identification pigments for dating and assigning artwork, but
also leads to the discovery of art forgeries as shown by
several spectacular examples. Other plenary lectures covered
the following topics: self-organization of coordination cage
compounds and control of chemical reactions in such
supramolecular vessels (M. Fujita, Tokyo); structure
elucidation of photosystem I with more than 96 cofactors and
of the unique Mn4 cluster in the water oxidizing complex of
photosystem II (P. Fromme, Berlin); synthesis and electronic
analysis of novel, inverted sandwich compounds of uranium (C.
C. Cummins, MA, USA); luminescent materials with variable
absorption and emission characteristics synthesized in a
rational way using a coordination chemical approach (V. W.-W.
Yam, Hong Kong); and complexes of lanthanide ions with
expanded and modified porphyrins which have advanced in
clinical testing as anticancer drugs (J. L. Sessler,
Austin/Texas). These contributions show once more that
fundamental research–especially in the interdisciplinary field
of coordination chemistry–leads to new insights, beautiful
results, and new applications.
The numerous diversified oral presentations were
organized in six parallel sessions (Bioinorganic Chemistry,
Metals in Medicine, Metals in Catalysis, Werner Type
Complexes, Supramolecular Coordination Chemistry, Materials
and Nanochemistry) giving many young scientists the
opportunity to present their research. The two poster
sessions, in which the participants actively and vividly
discussed all aspects of coordination chemistry and socialized
with each other, constituted an integral part of the
conference.
The fact that many discussions and conversations
lasted far into the night was due to the perfect organization.
The pleasant environment and the special ambience of the
conference location contributed considerably to the great
success of the ICCC35. Heidelberg and modern coordination
chemistry at its best!
This report was first published in German in the
November 2002 issue of the magazine of the German Chemical
Society.
Franc Meyer <franc.meyer@chemie.uni-goettingen.de>
is professor at the Georg- August-University Göttingen and
Katja Heinze is professor at the University of
Heidelberg.
Page
last modified 3 March 2003. Copyright © 2002-2003
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Questions
regarding the website, please contact edit.ci@iupac.org
|