Ferocenne essays

The name of “ferrocene” with the “ene” ending implying aromaticity, following the structure of benzene was deduced by Wilkinson and Woodward based on the unusual stability, diamagnetic nature, single C-H stretching in the IR region and nonpolar character of the compound. The sandwich structure was later confirmed by X-ray crystallography.

We will use some reagents that will cause the ferrocene to add either one acetyl group to an aromatic ring or add two acetyl groups to each of the aromatic rings. In order to determine how well this process had worked we employed: IR spectra analysis, column chromatography, and a little TLC.

Specifically, in this lab we are talking about the difference in polarity between the atoms of oxygen and carbon. Ferrocene is relatively low to none in polarity. Acetylferrocene, because of the carbonyl functional group, is more polar than the ferrocene.

The discovery of ferrocene in the 1950s was a doorway to the area of organometallic chemistry and this occurrence was followed by the synthesis of massive organometallic complexes. Although the discovery was unexpected, the impact was enormous.