On 21^st April 2023, Dr. Jordi Vila defended his PhD Thesis in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Girona. The title of the PhD thesis was: “Rhodium-Catalyzed Cyclization Reactions of 1,5-Bisallenenes involving alkenes and alkynes. Experimental and Theoretical Studies” and it was supervised by Prof. Anna Roglans and Dr. Anna Pla-Quintana from the DiMoCat group at IQCC. The members of the evaluation committee were Prof. Fèlix Urpí from UB acting as a President, Prof. Yoann Coquerel from CNRS Marseille acting as a vocal and Prof. Rosa Axet from CNRS Toulouse acting as a secretary. Jordi wrote a great Thesis and made a nice presentation! Congrats, Jordi!!!

 

In this work, we show that while is it very usual to find examples of 2D/2D aromaticity and not so usual but still possible to have 3D/3D aromatic compounds, it is very difficult to generate 2D/3D aromatic systems. Such a 3D/2D aromatic combination is not possible due to the ineffective overlap between the π-MOs of the planar species and the n+1 molecular orbitals in the aromatic cage that deter an effective electronic delocalization between the two fused units.

Experimental studies were done by the group of Prof. Francesc Teixidor and Clara Viñas at Institute of Materials Science (ICMAB-CSIC) and calculations were performed in the IQTCUB institute by Prof. Jordi Poater and in the DiMoCat group by Prof. Miquel Solà.

The study was recently published in Nature Communications:

 Poater, C. Viñas, M. Solà* and F. Teixidor*.

3D and 2D aromaticies like oil and water in the case of benzocarborane derivatives.

Nature Commun., 13 (2022) 3844, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31267-7. IF 17.694, Q1. Open Access.

The Back Cover of issue number 8 of volume 87 refers to the recently published article “Successive Diels-Alder cycloadditions of cyclopentadiene to [10]CPP⊃C₆₀”. The work has been carried out by Gerard Pareras, Sílvia Simon, Albert Poater and Miquel Solà, all (excepte Gerard) members of the DiMoCat group of the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis of the University of Girona.  The design and original idea of the artwork are acknowledged to Miss Coral Garcia-Fernandez and Dr. Gerard Pareras. The paper can be read in the following link:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.joc.1c03116

In the same issue, there is another paper entitled “Highly Selective Synthesis of Seven-Membered Azaspiro Compounds by a Rh(I)-Catalyzed Cycloisomerization/Diels–Alder Cascade of 1,5-Bisallenes” by Jordi Vila, Miquel Solà, Anna Pla-Quintana, and Anna Roglans, all members of the DiMoCat group of the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis of the University of Girona. The paper can be read in the following link:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.joc.2c00065

From 10 to 28 January, Prof. Slavko Radenković from the University of Kragujevac visited our research group to work with Prof. Miquel Solà. His research consisted in the determination of whether Baird’s rule is obeyed in boron clusters and on the aromaticity and singlet-triplet energy gap of metalla-acenes. It was a pleasure to have Slavko in our group for the last three weeks. He is not only a great researcher but also a quite good football player!

On 12th January 2022, Prof. Dr. Oscar Jiménez-Halla of the University of Guanajuato has been promoted to the highest research level in Mexico, the so-called “Investigador Nacional Nivel III”, for his leadership in the academic community of the country, as well as for his participation in the formation of the scientific community.
Congratulations Oscar! We are proud of you!!