Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Help with a Salicylaldehyde lithium complex

Zanls - 22-1-2015 at 12:20

Last week our class prepared Salicylaldehyde Diaquolithium(1). i can't for the life of my figure out the actual structure of it. I understand the mechanism and what is happening, but not the final product. If anyone could model this for my I would be greatly appreciative.

Thanks for your help !

DraconicAcid - 22-1-2015 at 17:46

Draw the structure of salicylaldehyde. Which hydrogen is the acidic one? Take it off, and make it an anion, with a lithium cation.

Darkstar - 22-1-2015 at 20:17

I think what he's having difficulty with is figuring out the structure of the actual lithium-salicylaldehyde complex itself. I already had ChemDraw open so I figured I'd draw it for the OP. Coordination chemistry isn't exactly my strongest area (inorganic in general, really), but I'm pretty sure this is what it looks like:

lithium2.bmp - 213kB

Can anyone confirm this for the OP?

Zanls - 23-1-2015 at 10:33

This makes sense; we took a proton NMR and the peaks seem to match this structure. Thanks :)