Date of Award

12-1991

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Dr. William J. Kelly

Second Advisor

Dr. Michael McCarville

Third Advisor

Dr. Donald Berndt

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Since the isolation of ferrocene in 1951, it has been shown to behave like benzene and may be acylated, sulfonated, metalated, and arylated. Like benzene, it also resists hydrogenation.

Daniel Trifan and Louis Nicholas (1957) were the first to show that ferrocene can be smoothly degraded by lithium and ethylamine. The isolation of free cyclopentadienyl ion on hydrolysis of the reaction mixture indicates that the cleavage leads initially to cyclopentadienyl lithium salt. A similar procedure applied to cyclopentadienylmanganese tricarbonyl also resulted in the formation of cyclopentadienyl lithium salt. This, when added to ferrous chloride, gave ferrocene. This technique can be expanded to other n-bonded cyclopentadienyl-metal complexes.

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