ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the principal tools for the study of vanadate speciation in aqueous solution were UV/vis and electrochemistry. Unfortunately, the complex chemistry associated with vanadate has rendered much, but certainly not all, of the earlier work obsolete. The reaction solutions often contained numerous products that,
a priori,
could not be specified. Properly describing the chemistry was somewhat like doing a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the pieces looked like or how many there were. Only with the advent of
V NMR spectroscopy in high field NMR spectrometers was there a tool in place that allowed a coherent picture of V(V) chemistry to be fully developed. The combination of potentiometry with NMR spectroscopy has proven a certain winner. Additionally, x-ray diffraction studies have provided an invaluable source of information, but it is information that, in all cases, must be used with extreme caution when attempting to describe the chemistry in solution.
