Comprehensive chemical experiment: temperature controlled synthesis, characterization and conversion of mononuclear and binuclear copper complexes

Undergraduates in chemistry have a certain theoretical understanding of thermodynamic and kinetic products, but few experiments can demonstrate directly differences in the preparation of these two products．Copper chloride and o-aminobenzamide were used in the present experiment as raw materials, water and ethanol were used as solvents．The reaction temperature only was changed: the thermodynamic red product ( 1 ) was obtained at 60 ℃ with water bath heating, but the kinetic olive product ( 2 ) was obtained with ice water bath cooling, with yield of 80.4% and 76.4% respectively．The thermodynamic and kinetic products with different compositions, structures and properties were obtained at different temperatures．In addition, complex 2 can be converted to complex 1 with heating．This will be an excellent comprehensive-experiment for undergraduates in chemistry．Such experiments will facilitate their understanding of structure-activity relationship．