CO2 activation by Copper (I) complexes

Ohishi et al. (from Hou group at Riken Research, Japan) reported facile CO2 activation by CuCl and N-heterocyclic carbene ligands. Organoboron complexes get the insertion of the CO2 and produce carboxylic acid counterpart by loosing the boron group. Their method is very efficient (over %90 conversion most cases) and the other functional groups on the structure seems little or not affected. The only downside is that you have to use little more than stochiometric (or in some cases twice as much) base (tBuOK) and similar amounts of acid (HCl) to get the reaction going.
Good job though.

Catalytic mysteries are being unraveled through Gold clusters

No wonder why clusters are important. These days a cluster means a tinier nanoparticle. You can actually count the atoms. Herzing et al. (Kiely group at Lehigh) showed us how a cluster can unravel mysteries of the catalysis world.

Gold clusters with 10 atoms (~0.5 nm) on iron oxide (FeOOH and Fe2O3) are found to oxidize CO 100% at 25 oC. Though gold (Au) is known to catalyze oxidation reaction in good yields, the unusual observation was that the smaller wasn't always the better. In fact atomic gold or monolayer gold was doing poorly as compared to bilayer clusters of 10 atoms. The article was well written and the discussions are satisfactory, however, the technique they relied on left some suspicion on several of us. The "High-magnification aberration-corrected STEM-HAADF images" were the basis of their arguments and it's very tricky to get reliable data (see the earlier post here).