Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1002/ejic.202500488

Publication Title

European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

1-14

Abstract

Scorpionate ligands have been advanced significantly through systematic modifications of their apical atoms and heterocyclic arms, expanding their structural diversity and chemical reactivity. Recent biologically inspired variants now enable accurate modeling of complex bioinorganic motifs, such as the Fe₄S₄ clusters of nitrogenase, and support enzyme‐like reactivity under mild aqueous conditions. These developments have broadened the impact of scorpionate chemistry across bioinorganic modeling, homogeneous catalysis, and biorthogonal transformations. In particular, expanded tripodal scaffolds provide modular, tunable platforms for mimicking enzyme active sites and probing biological nitrogen fixation pathways. Beyond fundamental insight, these ligands present practical opportunities for sustainable catalysis by enabling selective transformations in environmentally benign media. This concept article highlights triscatecholates as a new strategy for constructing expanded scorpionate ligand design that can guide future innovation.

Rights

© 2026 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Data Availability

Article states: "Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study."

Original Publication Citation

Medley, A. W., & Bender, T. A. (2026). Expanded scorpionate and siderophore‐inspired ligands: From foundational designs to modern applications. European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejic.202500488

ORCID

0009-0001-1031-8712 (Medley), 0000-0002-5001-4414 (Bender)

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