Question: What chemicals do you mix

Andrew Fensham-Smith answered on 15 Jun 2015:

I mix lots of chemicals! Most of my reactions involve a few things – the things I’m reacting and the liquid (solvent) I’m reacting them in.

The things I react are normally things called ligands – which find metals atoms and bond to them, and metals I want them to react with. The metals I react are normally gold, but people in my laboratory use palladium, platinum, iridium, rhodium, cobalt, iron – you name the metal, they probably use it! The ‘ligands’ they use – things that attach to the metal atoms – are normally molecules which have ‘spare electrons’. These are normally attach though a phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur atom.

The liquid(solvent) that I react them in is normally a solvent called dichloromethane – a carbon atom with two hydrogens and two chlorines attached to it. It’s great because it is quite polar (it can dissolve things with negative and positive bits) while I can also evaporate it very easily (it boils at 40 Celsius). The only problem is that it can give you cancer, but you can’t have everything!