Source A

1. Citation - Bochmann, Manfred. Organometallics 1. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Print. Oxford Chemistry Primers.
2. Validation - Manfred Bochmann is a professor of inorganic chemistry at the
University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and he has a Ph.D. in from the Imperial
College London.
3. Origin - After reading my summer reading, I looked for other books in the same
series (Oxford Chemistry Primers) that related to my topic.
4. Intended Audience - This book is for people just beginning to learn about
organometallics and related concepts, but for people already very familiar with other
more general or basic chemistry concepts.
5. Arguments - The book first introduced the general concept of transition metal
complexes. The author explained the role of electrons, the different ligands, and the
bonding in these complexes, specifically how the number of electrons affected the shape
of the compound as the orbitals would overlap differently and how different ligands
would achieve different purposes (drawing electron density away/toward the center, etc.).
The author then went into detail about complexes containing a metal-carbonyl structure
and how they have many different applications because metal-carbonyl structures are
particularly stable and are prevalent in many complexes. Then, the book went into metalalkyl structures and how they are important as intermediates and catalysts for further
production of other compounds. It talks about how these metal-alkyl compounds are
particularly reactive (supporting the fact that they are generally intermediates or for
catalysis) and able to aid in polymer production and other industries (catalysis). Finally,
this book talks about alkylidene and alkylidyne complexes and how they are unique in
properties and reactions (aiding in ring opening polymerization reactions).
6. Quotes - (paraphrase)

Most organometallic complexes with transition metals obey the 18-electron rule. Electron-rich
complexes with late transition metals and d8 configurations are usually square planar due to the
d-shell being more stable with higher atomic number.
Halide ligands are very useful in making the transition metal center of the complex reactive.
Bonds between metals are easily cleaved by halogens and the products of those reactions are
used readily as starting materials.
Metal alkyls are generally very reactive. They participate in reactions that cleave or make metalcarbon bonds, reactions with electrophiles, and reductive elimination reactions. Metal-carbon
bonds are central to organometallic chemistry and catalysis.

Reflection
I found this source along with my summer reading and started reading in late August. It was a lot
to digest and took a long time to read. I read at home after school for around 30 minutes or an
hour each day until I finished the book. While this source did not specifically focus on the
material aspects of organometallic transition metal chemistry, it was beneficial for how it offered
general knowledge on the topic and its explanations on why various things are the way they are.
It was particularly useful because it introduced all the different types of structures present in
these types of complexes and explained what they were, their structure, and what reactions they
participated in. While looking over scholarly articles, there is little introduction to these topics
and they generally give you a compound name or formula and expect you to be able to analyze
the basics by yourself as they talk about much more complicated topics. This book helped teach
me those basics and gave me a pretty good foundation for being able to analyze new complexes
when I see them. Not only was there a lot of information in this book, but there was also a ton of
helpful diagrams and drawings that helped further my understanding. The diagrams in the book

helped me further expand my knowledge by actually testing my application and understanding of

the information rather than just making me read a plain old book. Eventually, this information
about organometallic chemistry will be useful in my analysis of material properties and overall
understanding of how they work.

Description
This book surprisingly took me about 5 hours to read and understand. Although the book was
only 100 pages long, it was not simply reading text page after page. Firstly, a lot of the material
was new to me as organometallics is a fairly advanced concept (at least for high school) and I
had to learn some new terminology and notation. Secondly and most importantly, the book had
many diagrams and drawings that were difficult to understand or interpret without understanding
the material and what was said in the book really well. I frequently had to read some parts over
and over before I actually had any idea what was going on in the pictures. And finally, there was
often parts of the book that were very difficult to understand as the concept just went over my
head so I had to spend time researching a bit more about those areas. It probably would have
taken me around a hour or two to read the text in the book, but actually understanding what was
happening and applying it was the hard part that made this take so long.

Source B
1. Citation - Bochmann, Manfred. Organometallics 2. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.
Print. Oxford Chemistry Primers.
2. Validation - Manfred Bochmann is a professor of inorganic chemistry at the
University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and he has a Ph.D. in from the Imperial
College London.
3. Origin - After reading my summer reading, I looked for other books in the same
series (Oxford Chemistry Primers) that related to my topic.
4. Intended Audience - The intended audience of this book is definitely people that
are very familiar with chemistry in general and people that already have a background in
organometallics/read Organometallics 1.
5. Arguments - The book gives an advanced overview of more organometallic
structures that were not covered in Organometallics 1. The book offers a general
understanding of these organometallic compounds with pi ligands, showing how these

different pi ligands affect the reactivity of the compound, how they can be synthesized,
and their role in the world of chemistry. It compares these different ligands and how they
cause the difference in electronic effects, electron density, bond length of these
complexes. It talks about alkene, alkyne, cyclopentadienyl, etc. pi ligands, going into
much detail such as how alkene ligands complexes bond through a mechanism called
backbonding in which pi orbitals overlap during the formation of sigma bonds. It also
talks about the unique properties of these different ligands (i.e. how alkyne ligands can
act as donors of 2 or 4 electrons as their pi bonds are orthogonal).
6. Quotes - (paraphrase)
The Dewar-Chatt-Duncanson model provides an explanation for how bonding in alkene
complexes is achieved unlike many other organometallic transition metal complexes. The
carbon-carbon double bond gives a sigma-type donation into an empty pi orbital through an
associated pi backbonding orbital.
Bonding between alkene and alkyne complexes are generally very similar. However, there are
some differences such as alkynes being much more electropositive and having a stronger bonds
in general causing alkynes to actually replace alkenes when possible.
Alkynes have two sets of perpendicular pi bonds along with a sigma bond. In organometallic
complexes, one of these bonds can bind to a transition metal as if it was a sigma bond or through
pi backbonding.

Reflection
As the sequel to Organometallics 1, this book was pretty much about the same level of difficulty
and depth as it did not really explain more about the concepts introduced there but rather showed
more examples of different ligands. I also found this book along with my summer reading.

Similarly to how I read Organometallics 1, I read it at home after school for around 30 minutes
to an hour when I could. This book was also helpful in a similar way as the first book was. It
helped further teach me the basics of organometallics, showing me more types of ligands which
will ultimately be very helpful when I analyze these organometallic relations with materials
science more and more as none of the contemporary materials with real world applications are
the simple diatomic molecules seen in high school chemistry class but rather all complex
compounds composed of hundreds of atoms bonded in all sorts of different ways. It expanded
my knowledge on how to analyze compounds as complexes with pi ligands are not uncommon.
Eventually, if not already, I will encounter compounds in papers with ligands of all different sorts
of shapes and bonds, so this knowledge will be useful soon. This book also did not specifically
talk about materials science (although there was a bit in the applications part of some ligands),
but organometallic chemistry is crucial to my understanding of many things in materials such as
the topic of my two recent sources (perovskite cell structures) of which some if not most contain
organometallic structures within them.

Description
This book took around 4 hours to read. It took a little shorter than the previous book although it
was a bit longer (also around 100 pages). Like with the first organometallics book, this one was
full of diagrams to interpret and understand such as molecular orbital diagrams and reaction
schemes that I had to put more time to truly grasp rather than just read the text and move on. I
had more experience with organometallics, but as I said earlier, the book did not go more into
depth on the topics discussed in the first book, but rather introduced more new material (different
ligands) of which had completely different properties and characteristics. It introduced many

weird concepts that were difficult to imagine in my head (positions of orbitals, specifically) and
to understand how they actually worked. .

Source C
1. Citation - Nouailhat, Alain. An Introduction to Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
London: ISTE, 2008. Print.
2. Validation - Alain Nouailhat is the director of research at the French National
Center of Scientific Research. He is particularly responsible for the research department
on electronic components of silicon and nanotechnology.
3. Origin - I was looking for an introductory book to nanoengineering or
nanotechnology online and stumbled across this book.
4. Intended Audience - The intended audience is actually people that are new to
nanotechnology as it introduces the basic concepts surrounding it.
5. Arguments - This book first introduces nanotechnology, outlining how its
relationships with various entities in science are important (top-down and bottom-up
approaches). It details a brief history of what humanity took to finally arrive at
nanoscience, with the evolution of knowledge and advancing technological expertise. The
book outlined some basic science including various quantum mechanical principles
(behavior of bonds, electrons, etc.) and different types of materials (microscopic level semiconductors, molecules). The book then introduces the technology used to analyze
and research about these compounds such as scanning electron microscopes and how
these items work to do their job. Finally, the rest of the book talks about nanotechnology
and its presence in science today including its applications (electronics, information
technology, etc.), innovations, and the impact on society.

6. Quotes However, our world is fundamentally quantum. Our common sense in this world has no value in
the nanoworld; we have to invent new concepts. This does not happen overnight: little by little,
scientists have been able to interpret all known phenomena and give them a joint, common
theory which has never been called into question.
A good example is given by stacking pieces of Lego together in order to create larger complete
structures. The bonding force for atoms is based on the fact that the energy from the state created
by the two shared electrons is weaker than the two independent states. More precisely, while the
atoms approach one another, the atomic states taking part in the covalent bond will form two
molecular states, one of which is bonding and the other, with a superior energy level, is antibonding.
The structure of one molecule corresponds to the structure of another one. These two will
therefore form a bond leading to a specific result (passing through a membrane via a specific
gate, catalytic reactions, etc.).
The understanding of new phenomena in our world was essential to enable us to transfer
knowledge and technology to the nanoworld. This is similar to a reversed Big Bang, bringing
different branches of science together. Nanosciences lead us to a better understanding of
ourselves, whereas the unification of force related theories rules our world.

Description
This book was 7 chapters total with around 200 pages of actual information and diagrams. In its
entirety, it took me a bit over 8 hours to finish. This is because there were many new terms
throughout the entire book and it outlined many concepts that were hard to grasp (particularly the

quantum mechanics chapter/section). However, I think another reason for taking so long to finish
is the vagueness of the book itself. I dont really think it did a very good job of explaining some
of the topics (or perhaps it assumes the reader has some prior knowledge that I do not) and so I
had to research outside of the book to actually feel like I understood what was going on.

Reflection
I started this book two or three weeks ago and read a bit on and off with researching/expanding
other ideas in between. Overall, the book was a good alternative to some of the scholarly sources
I have been reading so far as it is actually intended for beginners to read and not researchers in
the field of materials science that are all doing extremely advanced experiments. However, as I
said in my description, the book was pretty vague in some parts and I feel like it did not give
adequate explanations for some of the ideas it put out, leading me to do some more research
outside on my own, specifically on quantum mechanics and microscopy. I feel like the book did
a pretty mediocre job at relaying information to me in retrospect as I needed to spend much more
time outside researching. However, it did get the job done in the end as I actually feel like I have
a decent understanding of quantum physics and the basic principles behind nanotechnology.
Additionally, the book was actually pretty helpful in the fact that it did not actually focus entirely
on the bare science behind nanoscience but rather also talked about the history, applications, and
impact of the field. This, I feel, will be particularly helpful to me as it can help me get toward
some more advocacy in my topic as it is kind of hard with pure information. At this point, what I
am going to advocate for exactly is still kind of blurry, but I think this book has helped me assess
what topics I can generally look into as it detailed the presence of nanotechnology in the modern
world. However, I am not sure how this nanotechnology chapter of my research can relate to
the organometallics research I have done in the past, though it may not have to necessarily. I do

not know how to really incorporate other ideas (into spring action or some major presentation)
unless I go into a broad presentation encompassing a variety of materials in which
organometallics and nanotechnology are only small parts that I compare with each other
somehow. Essentially, this book has actually given me a good introduction to nanotechnology
which I would think would be my research focus for some time to come. However, it has gotten
me thinking more about how to relate my topics together.

Source D
1. Citation - Schulz, Mark J., A. Kelkar, and Mannur J. Sundaresan.
Nanoengineering of Structural, Functional, and Smart Materials. Boca Raton, Fl.: CRC,
2006. Print.
2. Validation - Mark Schulz is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the
University of Cincinnati and he primarily works on nanoscale and smart materials. Ajit

Kelkar is a Professor of Nanoengineering at the Joint School of Nanoscience and

Nanoengineering. Mannur Sundaresasn is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and
Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University.
3. Origin - This book was found and purchased through Google Scholar.
4. Intended Audience - The book is fairly advanced and probably for those at least
in college level materials science/nanoengineering courses.
5. Arguments - The entire book is divided into three sections: Synthesis,
manufacture, and modeling of nanoscale materials. The first section is focused on
synthesis and the a lot of the chemistry behind these materials, talking about the
processes undergone and design of nanoscale materials. The second section discusses the
manufacturing of these nanoscale materials and the different types of nanoscale materials,
detailing how to enhance these materials and other considerations. The last section
generally talks about the research done in the field and how ideas and designs are
developed. It discusses in detail the different modeling done and how it helps in
characterizing materials.
6. Quotes Nanoengineering offers the very real promise of a veritable cornucopia of enabling new
materials, devices, and products. Examples range from improved materials for everyday use such
as self-cleaning paints and bathroom surfaces and deicing surface treatments for aircraft and
automobiles in northern climates to new forms of structural materials that might be stronger than
steel yet lighter than Styrofoam.

Developments in contemporary microelectronics have reached a point where futher progress is

limited by requirements for faster computing capabilities and by fundamental issues with the
conventional top-down approach to fabrication, as well as with its high cost. Significant

advances toward improved production efficiency and precise control over the morphology and
microstructure of nanoscale materials through self-assembly have been achieved.

The unique properties of miniaturization have already demonstrated benefits in information

storage, in energy storage, in chemical storage, in chemical and biological sensing devices, and
over the entire areas of electronics, photonics, and communication.

Reflection
The book actually took 9-10 hours to read. The book is 200 pages, but is filled with complex
ideas. Although the book the general information that the book offers is pretty basic, it is the
specific examples from the real world that are complicated. The book talked about a zinc oxide
material which is pretty relevant toward research today, but a lot of it was over my head and
required a lot a lot of time online researching other topics to understand. Not only this, the book
was filled with these complicated topics that I am still not sure if I understand and many
interesting pictures of present research. And so, first of all, the book taught me that the real world
is much more complex than the general theoretical topics that you can read about and applying
these ideas in real life is very hard. And of course, other than this, I also learned a lot about
nanoscience as a whole. The book was very comprehensive about the field of nanoengineering
and nanotechnology today. It went into specific detail about the synthesis of complex materials
including many specific classes of materials such as carbon nanotubes (which I also looked into
for source analysis), zinc oxides, and boron nitride nanotubes. It talked about the processes
behind the synthesis of these materials such as chemical vapor deposition, the ball milling and
annealing method, and other weird techniques. After that, the book went into detail about the
manufacturing techniques behind these nanoscale materials and a gave a behind the scenes

view of nanoengineering. Obviously, the book detailed many manufacturing techniques prevalent
in the nanoengineering field today such as plasma deposition and surface patterning. It talked
about manufacturing of many specific material classes such as structural nanocomposites, metalceramic thin films, composite fibers, single walled carbon nanotubes, and many others. The book
was very extensive about these different materials and devoted an entire chapter to each of these.
This section also discussed some of the chemistry behind different classes of materials and what
makes them have the characteristics that they do have such as the ductility of metals, brittleness
of ceramics, etc. Finally, the last section talked about the complex modeling that goes on in the
actual research of materials science and nanoengineering. It talked about the idea of
nanomechanics, the mechanical (elastic, kinetic, etc.) properties of nanoscale materials. It
comprehensively went over the different modeling methods and techniques used in present
research to find and characterize materials properties such as electron polarization, crystal
structure, atomic composition, and many others. Overall, this book was a very interesting read
and was good in that it went over many topics that are relevant in current research of
nanomaterials and technology. It was extremely organized and comprehensive, but a lot of it was
pretty complicated and so reading it was not as easy as thought of beforehand. Although, the
book did teach me a lot about the field of nanoengineering and should prove a really good source
to use.

Source E
1. Citation - Pierson, Hugh O. Handbook of Carbon, Graphite, Diamond, and
Fullerenes: Properties, Processing, and Applications. Park Ridge, NJ, U.S.A.: Noyes
Publications, 1993. Print.
2. Validation - Hugh O. Pierson was researching at Sandia National Laboratories.
He was a private consultant in Chemical Vapor Deposition.
3. Origin - I searched Google Scholar for readings involving carbon-based
nanostructures.
4. Intended Audience - The book was probably meant for more advanced
researchers as a lot of the material is pretty complicated, though not all of it.
5. Arguments - The book started off introducing carbon, as it is a handbook on
carbon. It talked about the structure, bonding, and compounds of carbon. Then the book
continued on to specific examples, starting with graphite. It detailed its specific thermal,
physical, mechanical, and chemical properties. It went into detail about specific carbon
and graphite forms such as vitreous carbon, carbon fibers, and pyrolytic graphite. Then

the book also went into much detail about diamond in much the same way it did graphite.
Finally it discussed fullerenes, specifically their structure and reactivity.
6. Quotes The heavily lopsided configuration of the sp3 orbital allows a substantial overlap and a strong
bond when the atom combines with a sp3 orbital from another carbon atom since the
concentration of these bonding electrons between the nuclei minimizes the nuclear repulsion and
maximizes the attractive forces between themselves and both nuclei.

Within each layer plane, the carbon atom is bonded to three others, forming a series of
continuous hexagons in what can be considered as an essentially infinite two-dimensional
molecule. The bond is covalent (sigma) and has a short length (0.141 nm) and high strength (524
kJ/mole). The hybridized fourth valence electron is paired with another delocalized electron of
the adjacent plane by a much weaker van der Waals bond (a secondary bond arising from
structural polarization) of only 7 kJ/mol (pi bond). Carbon is the only element to have this
particular layered hexagonal structure.

Unlike the sp3 or sp2 hybridizations, the fullerene hybridization is not fixed but has variable
characteristics depending on the number of carbon atoms in the molecule. This number varies
from twenty for the smallest geometrically (but not thermodynamically) feasible fullerene, the
C20 - to infinity for graphite (which could be considered as the extreme case of all the possible
fullerene structures).

Reflection

Reading the entirety of this book took somewhere between 10 and 11 hours. The book itself is
over three hundred and fifty pages, but even so, the book had many complicated concepts
discussed in it. The first few chapters and sections of the book were actually pretty simple as
they were dealing with simple carbon chemistry which I knew already such as the basic chemical
structure, bonding, reactivity, that carbon has 4 valence electrons, etc. However, the book got
pretty difficult really fast. Some of the chapters of the book were fairly straightforward such as
the graphite chapter. There were some concepts that were difficult to understand, but most of the
information was just fed and did not really take any effort to digest (just facts that you need to
know, not really understand because it was pretty miscellaneous). However, after shifting from
generic graphite to all these different, specific forms of graphite and carbon like vitreous carbon
and molded graphite, the book got more and more confusing and hard to grasp. A lot of these
items were hard to imagine and picture in my head, thus making it harder to understand all the
basic properties that these compounds possessed. I ended up spending a lot of time online look
through various sources at these different examples. Similarly, these sections contained some
calculations that were sort of mysterious to me and required further research. The next section of
the book, about carbon fibers, was fairly straightforward, though I had to learn some new terms
such as pitch and vapor deposition. Then, the book shifted its topic to diamond and diamondbased structures such as CVD diamond and synthetic diamond. Similar to the graphite section,
the chapter about general diamond properties was not very hard to understand and just a bunch of
facts dealing with optical, electrical, mechanical properties and others. However, also similar to
the graphite chapters, the chapters about specific types of diamond were somewhat hard to grasp.
The book detailed many complicated processes and ideas about synthetic diamond such as the
synthesis scheme for diamond and shock wave processing. CVD diamond was likewise

complicated though I was already familiarized with chemical vapor deposition. The mechanisms
and different roles of each component of the diamond were sort of difficult to understand and
likewise required further research. It then detailed various properties of CVD diamond and its
applications in grinding, thermal management, etc. The book then discussed a different type of
compound called diamond-like carbon which is new to me. It talked about processing,
characteristics and properties, and applications of this diamond-like carbon. And finally, the book
talked about fullerenes, which were interesting polyhedron-shaped allotropes of carbon. It talked
about the history of fullerenes as it is a less-known allotrope and is having a lot of research done
on it now to understand more. The book detailed how fullerenes were structured and how that
dictated their chemical reactivity and such. Overall, this book was less useful than I thought it
would be or than I think it will be. It talked about miscellaneous things that I dont really see as
that important, but it was a good source to learn some important ideas prevalent in modern
carbon nanotechnology and materials research.

Source F
1. Citation - Szwacki, Nevill Gonzalez, and Teresa Szwacka. Basic Elements of
Crystallography. Singapore: Pan Stanford, 2010. Print.
2. Validation - Nevill Szwacki is a part of the Physics faculty at the University of
Warsaw and his present research focuses on diluted magnetic semiconductors and boron
nanostructures.
3. Origin - This source was found through searching for texts on Google Scholar.
4. Intended Audience - The text is for those that are not as familiar with
crystallography and materials science as it is an introductory text.
5. Arguments - The text first introduces crystal structures and explains what they
are and why they are important in study. It then goes into specifics about various different
types of crystal structures including triclinic, monoclinic, rhombohedral, etc. cells. It
discusses the different elements and their relation to crystal structures and how they are
generally structured on the microscopic level. The text then details crystal structures of
many binary/polyatomic compounds such as common ionic lattices like Zinc Blende and
Calcium Fluoride. Finally the text talks about indices used to describe crystal structure
and how they are useful in discussion of the topic.
6. Quotes The examples of two-dimensional lattices considered here show that the lattice has not only
translation symmetry but also point symmetry. A poi transformation is a geometric
transformation that leaves at least one point invariant (rotations, reflections, etc.). The rotation
points overlap with lattice nodes and also other high symmetry points of the lattice.

If we place lattice points at the vertices of each parallelepiped that represents the conventional
cell of one of the seven crystal systems, then we obtain 7 different lattices. All the points placed
at the vertices of a cell contribute with 1 point to this cell.

There are also a large number of elements that crystallize in a structure that can be described by
a hexagonal Bravais lattice but with two-atom basis. This is the so called hexagonal close-packed
(hcp) crystal structure. To describe this structure, identical spheres are arranged in a regular array
to minimize the interstitial volume. This close-packing of spheres may lead, however, to many
different arrangements.

Reflection
I spent a little less than 9 hours reading and going through this text. I spent this long on this
because, first of all, the text is a little over 200 pages long. But also, the text is, although meant
to introduce the concepts and the topic discussed (crystallography), has some pretty advanced
ideas or visualizations that need to be understood such as the main focus or basis of the entire
text -- the 14 Bravais lattices. So the text first starts off by introducing what a crystal structure is
and what crystallography is all about, why it is useful, how it is used today, etc. Then, the text
goes into the main part and basis of the entire field, the different types of crystal structures and
lattices including hexagonal, tetrahedral, triclinic, etc. It describes all of these lattices in detail,
comparing and contrasting them to each other as well as specific cells for different compounds
(Wigner Seitz cell). The text then goes on to talk about different metal elements and their
structures. Metals have a variety of different structures and can even change structures based on
different conditions so the text discusses the general lattice cell structures of each different metal.

The text then goes on to discuss different cell structures of binary and polyatomic compounds as
various ionic compounds bond in. It discusses various structures like zinc blende, calcium
fluoride, nickel arsenide structures and others. It talks about the different types of bonding and
coordination (octahedral, tetrahedral, alternating charge, etc.) of all of these different structures.
Finally, the text talks about the different types of ways of characterizing unit cells and how to
describe them -- using indices to describe specific directions and arrangements of planes or cells
in a crystal structure. It talks about reciprocal indices and their applications in triclinic, simple
cubic, and face centered cubic lattices and also discusses miller indices. It details what miller
indices are, how to use them, and how they are used. It talks about applications of miller indices
and their role in describing planes, families of planes, directions, etc. Overall, this text was pretty
useful as a basic introductory text to crystallography, characterizing crystal structures, and
similar concepts. It helps in understanding general materials science concepts such as Youngs
Modulus, creep rate, and other characterization techniques or tests. This book was actually
structured pretty well and did a fairly good job of teaching the material as it is basically a
textbook in hindsight. However, some of the concepts were still sort of vague or required further
research to understand, a fault prevalent in many other textbooks as well. Consequently, I was
able to actually learn a fairly large amount of material and again a stronger understanding of why
things happen in the way that they do and the different structures that arise from different
elements and compounds. It aids in ideas like understanding why carbon nanotubes can exist in
the forms that they do and how fullerenes can bond into polyhedral structures, and various other
complicated ideas.