The aim of this book is to survey a number of chemical compounds that
some chemists, theoretical and experimental, find fascinating. Some of
these compounds, like planar carbon species or oxirene, offer no obvious
practical applications; nitrogen oligomers and polymers, in contrast,
have been touted as possible high-energy-density materials. What unites
this otherwise eclectic collection is that these substances are unknown
and offer a challenge to theory and to synthesis.
That such a challenge exists is in some cases almost obvious to most
chemists. The instability of nitrogen polymers, for example, might be
taken nearly as an axiom, to be quantified, but not refuted by
computations and to be subjected to an almost superfluous (but rather
challenging) validation by synthesis. On the other hand, oxirene, the
unsaturated relative of the prosaic oxirane, presents no immediately
obvious oddity, yet this molecule has defied all attempts at synthesis
and remains a theoretical conundrum, in that it is not certain if it can
even exist!
It is hoped that this collection of idiosyncratic molecules will appeal
to chemists who find the study of chemical oddities interesting and, on
occasion, even rewarding.
"A great romp through imagined molecules, a challenge to the talents of
synthetic chemists! Errol Lewars leads us expertly through a wonderland
of the chemical imagination, fascinating molecular structures that do
not (yet) exist!"
Prof. Roald Hoffmann - Nobel Laureate, Chem. 1981- Cornell University,
New York, USA
"This book is an educational and enjoyable read, devoted to species on
the fringes of chemical, calculation and conceptual plausibility"
Prof. Joel Liebman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA
