Blue

On the previous picture showing the yellow crystals you can notice that there are specs of blue crystals mixed in. These blue crystals are a huge thorn in my side. They grow out of solution under the same conditions that the yellow crystals due. The new picture is more representative of the ratio I get, making purification a huge problem. These products are paramagnetic, making NMR analysis a tad more difficult, and as of yet I don't know what the blue crystals are exactly. The crystallographer reports that they are diffractable (actually better than the yellow crystals, surprisingly since they seem a bit smaller) and thus, he will collect on them and see what they are.

This is just about the most expensive way to go about characterizing an unknown compound. No other characterization methods have been successful, and I'm a bit worried that I'm going to find out these blue crystals are nothing but starting material with some bit coordinated to it. Nevertheless, X-ray quality crystals were grown from a slow cooled solution of heptane. And I'm not counting these as "Blue" on my color checklist until I find out what they are.