The iChEM Prof. Haiping Xia and the XMU Prof. Jun Zhu of the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering recently collaborated for the work of planar Mo¨bius aromatic chemistry and their achievement was published on Nature Communications with topic of “Planar M?bius Aromatic Pentalenes Incorporating 16 and 18 Valence Electron Osmiums” (Nat. Commun., 2014, 5, 3265 doi: 10.1038/ncomms4265). In 2013, their excellent work published on Nature Communications with topic of "Transition metals induced mutation of anti-aromaticity to aromaticy", has earned them the award of "2013 Top 10 Advances in Science and Technology of Universities in China" from the Ministry of Education. (Nat. Chem., 2013, 5, 698-703)

Aromaticity, a highly stabilizing feature of molecules with delocalized electrons in closed circuits, is generally restricted to ‘Hu¨ckel’ systems with 4n+2 mobile electrons. Although the Mo¨bius concept extends the principle of aromaticity to 4n mobile electron species, the rare known examples have complex, twisted topologies whose extension is unlikely. Here they report the realization of osmapentalenes, the first planar Mo¨bius aromatic complexes with 16 and 18 valence electron transition metals. The Mo¨bius aromaticity of these osmapentalenes, documented by X-ray structural, magnetic and theoretical analyses, demonstrates the basis of the aromaticity of the parent osmapentalynes. All these osmapentalenes are formed by both electrophilic and nucleophilic reactions of the in-plane p component of the same carbyne carbon, illustrating ambiphilic carbyne reactivity, which is seldom observed in transition metal chemistry. Their results widen the scope of Mo¨bius aromaticity dramatically and open prospects for the generalization of planar Mo¨bius aromatic chemistry.

Synthesis and structure characterization of this work was implemented by the graduate students Congqing Zhu, Ming Luo, and Qin Zhu under the guidance of Prof. Xia. The XMU Prof. Tingbin Wen participated into the discussion for product structure characterization and the XMU Prof. Xin Lu, Prof. P. V. R. Schleyer and Dr. J. I-C. Wu of University of Georgia participated into the discussion for aromaticity.

This work was sponsored by the NSFC, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the NSF from USA.

Resources from http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4265/full/ncomms4265.html