The development of polyoxometalate (POM) chemistry during the last half-century or so has benefitted tremendously from single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Besides structural aspects, the study of the physicochemical properties of POMs has developed tremendously in recent decades. The multitude of attractive properties includes controllable size, composition, charge density, redox potential, acid strength, high thermal stability in the solid state, solubility in polar/nonpolar solvents and reversible electron/proton storage. Such versatility renders POMs of interest for academic and industrial applications, especially in catalysis. The contributions to this special issue on POMs provide an excellent overview of the current state of the subject, as well as providing updates to current reseach.

Guest Editors: José Ramón Galán-Mascarós (Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Spain) and Ulrich Kortz (Jacobs University, Germany)

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Qianyu Feng has won the Jacobs Dean’s Prize 2018 for the best Bachelor thesis in the focus area Health. She performed BSc research in the laboratory of Prof. U. Kortz and the title of her thesis is “Synthesis and Characterization of (a) Cubic Polyoxopalladate-Based Metal-Organic Framework and (b) Wheel-Shaped 27-Tungsto-3-Arsenate(III), [K(AsW₈O₃₀)₃(WO(H₂O))₃]^14-”. She is the coauthor of one publication: Selective Rb⁺ vs K⁺ Guest Incorporation in Wheel-Shaped 27-Tungsto-3-Arsenate(III) Host, [M⊂{(β-As^IIIW₈O₃₀)(WO(H₂O))}₃]^14-(M = K, Rb), Kandasamy, B.; Sudmeier, T.; Ayass, W. W.; Lin, Z.; Feng, Q.; Bassil, B. S.; Kortz, U. Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. 2018. After graduation at Jacobs this summer Qianyu has now left Bremen in order to pursue graduate studies in Chemistry at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

• Discovery and Evolution of Polyoxopalladates
  Yang, P.; Kortz, U. Acc. Chem. Res. 2018, [Read Online]

2018 marks the exciting 85th birthday celebration of the “Keggin structure”, which itself is at the center of polyoxometalate (POM) chemistry! The first polyoxoanions were reported almost two centuries ago by Berzelius (1826), but J. F. Keggin could only characterize them structurally in 1933 [1]. He solved the structure of the free acid H3PW12O40 using powder X-ray diffraction, a highly symmetrical metal-oxo anion with tetrahedral symmetry (see Fig. 1). The availability of X-ray diffraction techniques paved the way for the discovery of a large number of novel POMs with different shapes and sizes. Keggin is our POM pioneer!

[Original article]

She can perfectly recall the first days at her secondary school in her hometown of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. Her physics teacher? A man. The mathematics teacher? A man. The biology teacher? A man. “But then this teacher walked into the classroom and I thought, ‘Wow, a woman who teaches chemistry!’” Nickolet Ncube recollected. “She got me fascinated in the subject, she inspired me, I wanted to be like her one day.”

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Inga Dammann (BSc Chemistry, 2017) and Wassim W. Ayass (PhD, Chemistry, 2017)

July 6, 2017

The two Jacobs students Inga Dammann (BSc Chemistry, 2017) and Wassim W. Ayass (PhD Chemistry, 2017) qualified in a competition among young scientists worldwide to participate in the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting dedicated to Chemistry from 25 – 30 June 2017.

420 scientists from 78 countries participated and met around 30 Nobel laureates, attended their lectures, and had discussions with them. Inga was funded by the Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI) and Wassim was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and co-funded by the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID). Both Inga and Wassim are members of the research group of Prof. Ulrich Kortz at Jacobs University, performing research on synthetic inorganic materials chemistry and catalysis.

More info about the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in this video:
http://mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/36833/opener