This award from the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program will support research in the area of organometallic chemistry. The project is expected to provide fundamental information about the chemical bonds which hold together the atoms of hydrogen-containing organometallic compounds. Such compounds are important catalysts for the industrial synthesis of organic compounds. This project will use three solid-state deuterium NMR techniques to study bonding in organometallic compounds involving bonds of the types M-H, M-H-M, M-(dihydrogen), M-(methylene)-M, as well as transition metal activated C-H bonds. Correlations between molecular and electronic structures and variations in the solid-state NMR spectra will be established by molecular orbital calculations on model complexes. One of the solid-state NMR techniques, ADLF spectroscopy, will be used to acquire high-resolution, solid-state deuterium NMR spectra of adsorbed species on surfaces. The goal of the research is to evaluate solid-state deuterium NMR spectroscopy as a technique for fundamental studies of organometallic complexes and surface adsorbed species. The anticipated benefits to solution and surface chemistry include determining the structure of metal-hydrogen bonds and the electronic charge resident on reactive carbon sites.
