The gladiators’ fight at the amphitheatre in Tarragona represents the ‘fight’ between the two main mechanisms (concerted and S_N2) to achieve the oxidative addition involved in many organometallic processes.

In the paper, they study the mechanisms of the oxidative addition in the reaction between bromomethane and Pd⁰phosphine complexes. They take into account several variables such as the number of ligands on the metal, the nature of the phosphine and the nature of the solvent.

If you want to find out more about the trends they have identified, why don’t you check out the paper?

Maria Besora, Christophe Gourlaouen, Brian Yates and Feliu Maseras

Dalton Trans., 2011, 40, 11089-11094