This grant from the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program is in the area of organometallic chemistry. The project is concerned with expanding the chemistry of and gaining further insights into the properties of selected transition metal carbonyl and boron metal carbonyl cluster systems. Of particular interest is the chemistry of these metal cluster compounds on surfaces, where they serve as catalysts for the interconversion of organic compounds and as models of surface-supported metal clusters, which constitute another important class of heterogeneous industrial catalysts. The synthetic effort of the project is designed to provide several new heteronuclear cluster materials which contain triangular or higher polyhedral cores of mixed metals, or metals plus a main group element such as boron. Chemistry of the formation of triosmiumnonacarbonyl clusters containing BCO or B3O3 groups will be studied to gain insights into the reaction pathways by which they and some of their derivatives are formed. The surface organometallic chemistry of a number of these mixed metal and metal boron clusters will be examined on hydroxylated magnesia and conversion to heteroatomic metal clusters will be attempted. In principle, a study of such particles can provide interesting correlations and basic understanding of highly dispersed heteroatomic catalysts and of the influence of one type of atom on the catalytic properties of the other. Some modelling of clusters on oxide surfaces will be attempted also.
