Really pleased to announce that our paper on the B(C6F5)3 catalyzed dehydrogenation of pyrrolidines has been published in ACS Catalysis! My first (joint)-first author paper - 2 years of hard work for both Ana and I! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

Good to see it online whilst on an early train to Main-Group Meeting 🚂 challenging but interesting chemistry this one. Many thanks to Mary Mahon 💎 , Sam Neale Dr Claire McMullin 💻 , Emma Richards 📈(EPR) and Mike 🕺 pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.10…

PhD defended ✅✅✅ Massive thanks to Mike and Suntharalingam Group for the really interesting and enjoyable discussions! End of an era for me in the Ortu Group Dr Fabrizio Ortu! Thanks for all the great memories🙌🏻🎉

Huge congratulations Dr Bowles! Absolute pleasure working with you all these years, despite some occasional questionable choices in your lab's playlist! Best of luck with whatever comes next, you'll be missed. Thanks a lot to Mike Hill and Suntharalingam Group for doing the honours!

New paper on group 1 methanides led by Dr Matthew Stevens now out in Polyhedron Elsevier Chemistry, as part of a special issue dedicated to Robert Mulvey.Thanks also to Liu Yu, Kale and Rebecca Hawker for the great work! #chemtwitter Leicester Chemistry sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

What happens when you reduce a Ca complex in a ball-mill? Find out on our Research Square #preprint. A mammoth effort led by Alex, in collaboration with Chemistry@Bath Uni UoM Chemistry UoM Photon Science Newcastle Chemistry and UoBChemistry researchsquare.com/article/rs-465… Leicester Chemistry #chemtwitter

A balls to the wall (milling jar) effort from everyone involved! Check it out💥

A new RoSE (and blue again)! It was such a saga, and I am honored by working with Dr Fabrizio Ortu James A. Dawson, Dr Claire McMullin, Floriana Tuna & David Collison (Manchester) and their teams on this project. Well-done Alex! #mechanochem

Check out our calcium electride work now out in J. Am. Chem. Soc.! A tour de force led by Alex and James Quirk, covering mechanochemical synthesis, magnetism and computational studies (and more!) pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja…

It all started from a random conversation with Erli Lu Group several years go about our group 2 tris-amide complexes (…mistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ch…). We visited Erli's lab to ball-mill one of our Ca compounds, and obtained a room temperature stable electride rather than a Ca(I) species.

How did we work this out? Thanks to the invaluable help of some fantastic collaborators! James Quirk and James A. Dawson calculated the structure of our new material, complemented by a suite of magnetic measurements done by Floriana Tuna and David Collison EPSRC National Research Facility for EPR Newcastle Chemistry

Alex then did lots of reactivity studies, and from benzene obtained an interesting (and very pretty!) hydride complex. Dr Claire McMullin did a fantastic job looking at the role of the ligands in stabilising various conformations, key to understand the reactivity profile.

This was a huge team effort - thanks to everyone involved! Also big thanks to Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for funding this work Alex James Quirk Liu Yu Dr Conrad Goodwin Dr Claire McMullin James A. Dawson Erli Lu Group UoM Chemistry Newcastle Chemistry UoBChemistry UoM Photon Science Leicester Chemistry University of Leicester

In J. Am. Chem. Soc. now! In this national tour-de-force of collaboration, we expand the #mechanochemistry syntheis of Room-temperature Stable Electride (RoSE) to Ca! Dr Fabrizio Ortu Dr Claire McMullin James A. Dawson pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja…

Jamie’s paper on helical dinuclear 3d metal complexes with bis(bidentate) [S,N] ligands now published in DaltonTransactions with #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1039/D4DT02… Thanks Jörg Imperial College London for fun collaboration and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for funding

🚨#PhD ALERT!🚨 Lots of exciting opportunities as part of CENTA, including a PhD project in our team. If you are interested in inorganic/organometallic chemistry and sustainable synthesis, have a look here: shorturl.at/kZ86U Get in touch if you want to know more!