‘I know it won’t work, but I want to try it anyway’, Errikos Kounalis (Utrecht University) told his supervisor. In doing so, he unintentionally created a frustrated Lewis trio, a ligand-metal complex that had previously only existed as a theoretical concept in the literature. 

Frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) consist of an electron-density accepting Lewis acid and an electron-density donating Lewis base that sit together in a sterically hindered, or frustrated, structure. Dissolving this frustration can catalyse chemical reactions; in 2006, the first FLP researchers used it to split hydrogen. Since then, the field has grown considerably and many (catalytic) reactions seem possible.

But Errikos Kounalis, a PhD student in Associate Professor Danny Broere’s group at Utrecht University, started out working on something completely different. During his master’s thesis – also with Broere – Kounalis developed a ligand to bring two metal atoms close together. ‘It was perfect for the later, “softer” transition metals according to the theory of hard and soft acids and bases’, Broere explains. ‘You can think of it as a ligand with two parking spaces where two soft metals could park.’