With support from the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program Dr. Steven H. Strauss will synthesize negatively charged ions (anions) designed to form extremely weak bonds with the positively charged ions (cations) of metals. The metal salts of such anions are expected to have unusually high reactivities, so that they can be used to prepare adducts of metals which cannot be made by any other route. The goal of the project is to understand the solvation of metal ions by very weak donor solvents such as chlorocarbons and hydrocarbons. Metal salts of perfluorinated oxyanions such as oxopentafluorotellurate(VI) and dioxotetrafluorotellurate(VI), and extremely large perfluorinated anions such as tetrakis- (oxopentafluorotellurato)borate will be prepared. By virtue of the electronic and steric properties of the anions, the metal ions will be rendered extremely reactive and are expected to coordinate to very weakly basic solvents such as methylene chloride, nitromethane, hexane and liquid xenon. New synthetic methodologies will be developed for the preparation, isolation and structural and spectroscopic characterization of metal complexes containing weakly nucleophilic, weakly bound, and volatile solvent ligands. Complexes of paramagnetic transition metals and lanthanide ions will be prepared. The coordination of solvent molecules to a variety of metal ions in neat solvent will be studied by EXAFS spectroscopy. Potential applications of the reactive complexes to metalized polymers and new metastable phases of metal salts will be explored.
