Experimentally, it is well known that the overpotentials for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on RuO2 and IrO2 are similar and rather low. The question is whether widespread computational electrochemistry models based on adsorption thermodynamics are capable of reproducing such observations. Making use of DFT results of revised Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (RPBE) and Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) functionals from six different codes and various types of pseudopotentials, we show that whereas IrO2 is consistently predicted to have low overpotentials, RuO2 is predicted to have large overpotentials. A new methodology based on adsorption‐energy scaling relations shows that the inaccurate prediction for RuO2 stems from its anomalous adsorption energies of oxygen/oxygenates. Including explicit water solvation and using functionals that account for van der Waals interactions such as vdW‐DF, vdW‐DF2 and optPBE‐vdW modifies appropriately the adsorption energies so that both oxides are predicted to be highly active.

A range of monomeric tetra-coordinate copper (II) and zinc (II) complexes based on N,O-bidentate salicylaldimine Schiff base ligands has been synthesized and characterized using various spectroscopic techniques. These complexes were then evaluated as initiators in ring-opening polymerization of lactides at both 70• C and 110• C. The effect of structural changes in the complexes on the ability of these compounds to initiate lactide polymerization as well as the impact on the chemical and physical characteristics of the polymers obtained indicate that the coordination geometry of the metal complex, M-O bond length and substituents on the Schiff base ligand all play a role in the catalyst activity. Electronic factors were dominant in the case of the copper complexes while steric factors prevailed in the case of Zn initiators. Both the Zn and Cu complexes exhibit characteristics of living ring opening polymerization.

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