Alyx Woodward (obsolete) @Alyx@computerfairi.es

here's the wikipedia page for the largest American solar panel manufacturer, "First Solar" (at least, largest American manufacturer according to one hasty Google search.) they use cadmium telluride instead of silicon, probably because silicon manufacture and distribution is heavily dependent on trade policy bullshit

mm-mm, cadmium telluride. it's what's for breakfast!

anyone wanna try to work with _that_ shit in their "solarpunk" utopia?

the big problem I have with "let's do solar everything" as an approach is that commercial solar cells are the products of a very dirty business, namely, corporate semiconductor manufacture

like, maybe that can be streamlined somehow, but right now, we have solar cells at all because of fantastically long and complex supply chains leading eventually back to China, because China has (a) the cheapest raw materials and (b) the most heavily exploited labor

like, I gotta admit. I've got only the sketchiest notions about what this "solarpunk" business is supposed to be all about

like, I kinda get the general idea that it's about building an alternate sort of social and industrial base that makes maximum use of renewable sources of energy etc.

but "solarpunk" itself seems more like...I dunno, a brand, or a style, so I've kinda ignored it

in _mesitylene_ as the solvent. didn't they at least TRY to use something else? again, I complain that in older _Organic Syntheses_ entries, they'd talk about how they tried to use more commonplace solvents but failed

what have we got here...

ortho-alkylation of phenol with a terminal olefin, using dirhenium decacarbonyl as the catalyst. oh, yeah, everyone's got rhenium carbonyls lying around the stock room

ok looks like a few non-terminal alkenes worked too

catechol and hydroquinone gave mixed mono- and di-alkylation

http://orgsyn.org/demo.aspx?prep=v94p0280

#chemistry

trying a little experiment here...

went to a page that supplies me with a random English word

gonna put that word into the _Organic Syntheses_ search box

and see what the first hit is

all right the word is "possess"

ooh here's a thing! porphyrin complexes of iron(4) that can achieve certain organic oxidations

http://cbs.ewha.ac.kr/pub/data/2007_07.pdf

huh. decamethylferrocene can be oxidized to Fe(4). wonder if that's any use for anything

are there organoiron(6) compounds?

what's the point of this? hypervalent iodine reagents are one of the few types of chemical reagent that can be made to carry out organic oxidations that traditionally require heavy metals (like hexavalent chromium or osmic acid). and they can be regenerated after use with auxiliary oxidizers that are cheap and clean, like peroxo salts

jeez kinda wonder if hypervalent iron can be a thing. like, people have tried to use inorganic "ferrates" (hexavalent iron salts with the FeO4= anion) as oxidants

I kinda wanna play with the hypervalent iodine stuff but only with polymer-bound versions. that would offer an easy way to recover and reuse the precious iodine

it's totally a thing. here's a randomly chosen Google Images result for polymer-bound IBX ("IBX" is the usual abbreviation for "iodoxybenzoic acid" which is really a benziodoxole derived from oxidation of 2-iodobenzoic acid)

#chemistry

I feel like a synthesis like this, in an earlier age of _Organic Syntheses_, would have had a lot more trials done on whether you really needed the weird reagents. there'd be footnotes about how they'd tried (say) methanesulfonic acid or toluenesulfonic acid instead of camphorsulfonic acid, only with poorer results. we'd get more glimpses into the experimental process

bleh another one of those _Organic Syntheses_ entries where you look at it and think "welp I probably ain't never gonna even think of using this one"

the reaction: oxidative coupling of aryltrialkylsilanes to electron-rich arenes to yield unsymmetrical biaryls. high-valent iodine reagents as the oxidizing agent, in the presence of racemic camphorsulfonic acid (camphorsulfonic acid?! why?) and *gold* catalysis

http://orgsyn.org/demo.aspx?prep=v96p0150

#chemistry