Amorphous coordination number

Crystalline Silica. Sihca exists in a variety of polymorphic crystalline forms (23,41—43), in amorphous modifications, and as a Hquid. The Hterature on crystalline modifications is to some degree controversial. According to the conventional view of the polymorphism of siHca, there are three main forms at atmospheric pressure quart2, stable below about 870°C tridymite, stable from about 870—1470°C and cristobaHte, stable from about 1470°C to the melting point at about 1723°C. In all of these forms, the stmctures are based on SiO tetrahedra linked in such a way that every oxygen atom is shared between two siHcon atoms. The stmctures, however, are quite different in detail. In addition, there are other forms of siHca that are not stable at atmospheric pressure, including that of stishovite, in which the coordination number of siHcon is six rather than four. 

Solid state NMR is a relatively recent spectroscopic technique that can be used to uniquely identify and quantitate crystalline phases in bulk materials and at surfaces and interfaces. While NMR resembles X-ray diffraction in this capacity, it has the additional advantage of being element-selective and inherently quantitative. Since the signal observed is a direct reflection of the local environment of the element under smdy, NMR can also provide structural insights on a molecularlevel. Thus, information about coordination numbers, local symmetry, and internuclear bond distances is readily available. This feature is particularly usefrd in the structural analysis of highly disordered, amorphous, and compositionally complex systems, where diffraction techniques and other spectroscopies (IR, Raman, EXAFS) often fail. 

The chemistry of silicon in very low oxidation states is one of the most fascinating research areas, which can be located between molecular compounds of silicon and elemental (perhaps amorphous) silicon [190-194]. Most interesting results have recently been obtained by structural investigations of siliddes in Zintl phases. However, compounds of silicon with negative oxidation states and very low coordination numbers of 1, 2, and 3 are so far only known in the composite of a crystal lattice. 

In spite of the absence of periodicity, glasses exhibit, among other things, a specific volume, interatomic distances, coordination number, and local elastic modulus comparable to those of crystals. Therefore it has been considered natural to consider amorphous lattices as nearly periodic with the disorder treated as a perturbation, oftentimes in the form of defects, so such a study is not futile. This is indeed a sensible approach, as even the crystals themselves are rarely perfect, and many of their useful mechanical and other properties are determined by the existence and mobility of some sort of defects as well as by interaction between those defects. Nevertheless, a number of low-temperamre phenomena in glasses have persistently evaded a microscopic model-free description along those lines. A more radical revision of the concept of an elementary excitation on top of a unique ground state is necessary [3-5]. 

To conduct experiments of this kind it is very convenient to make use of disorder adsorbent provided by a film of amorphous selenium. During deposition under vacuum conditions, the pressure being no higher than lO Torr, the amorphous modification of selenium is being formed [38]. There are two forms of amorphous selenium which differ in coordination numbers and radii of coordination spheres. The first form is... 

Table 8.53 shows the main features of XAS. The advantages of EXAFS over diffraction methods are that the technique does not depend on long-range order, hence it can always be used to study local environments in amorphous (and crystalline) solids and liquids it is atom specific and can be sensitive to low concentrations of the target atom (about 100 ppm). XAS provides information on interatomic distances, coordination numbers, atom types and structural disorder and oxidation state by inference. Accuracy is 1-2% for interatomic distances, and 10-25 % for coordination numbers. 

Transition metal oxides, rare earth oxides and various metal complexes deposited on their surface are typical phases of DeNO catalysts that lead to redox properties. For each of these phases, complementary tools exist for a proper characterization of the metal coordination number, oxidation state or nuclearity. Among all the techniques such as EPR [80], UV-vis [81] and IR, Raman, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and NMR, recently reviewed [82] for their application in the study of supported molecular metal complexes, Raman and IR spectroscopies are the only ones we will focus on. The major advantages offered by these spectroscopic techniques are that (1) they can detect XRD inactive amorphous surface metal oxide phases as well as crystalline nanophases and (2) they are able to collect information under various environmental conditions [83], We will describe their contributions to the study of both the support (oxide) and the deposited phase (metal complex). 

Metal oxides, 31 78-79, 89, 102, 123, 157-158, 191, 32 199-121 see also Amorphous metal oxides Sulfate-supported metal oxides specific oxides adsorbed oxygen on, 27 196-198 binary, surface acidity, 27 136-138 catalytic etching, 41 390-396 coordination number, 27 136 electrocatalysts, 40 127-128 Fe3(CO)i2 reaction with, 38 311-314 Lewis acid-treated, 37 169-170 multiply-valent metals, electrocatalytic oxidations, 40 154-157 superacids by, 37 201-204 surface acidity, methods for determining, 27 121... 

Traditionally, X-ray absorption edge measurements have been used to determine oxidation states of metals in complex materials. The extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), on the other hand, provides structural information such as bond distances and coordination numbers even with powdered samples, crystalline or amorphous, the fine structure essentially resulting from short-range order around the absorbing atom. The technique is also useful for studying solid surfaces (SEXAFS). The observation of fine structure beyond the K-absorption edges of materials dates back to... 

For the subject matter of this book, it is of particular interest to consider the situation for a non-crystalline system analogous to that of crystalline ytterbium or strontium under pressure, namely that when a valence and conduction band are separate or overlap slightly. If the degree of overlap can be changed by varying the mean distance between atoms, the composition or the coordination number then a metal-insulator transition can occur. Many examples will be discussed in this book, particularly amorphous films of composition (Mgi- )j(By3, liquid mercury at low densities, and liquid tellurium alloys in which the coordination number changes with temperature. The transition is, we believe, of Anderson type. 

The general intransigence of the crystalline iminolithium hexamers toward further interaction with Lewis bases is not shown by the amorphous diaryliminolithiums. This may reflect their extensively stacked nature (Section II,A Fig. 10), which, while raising the lithium coordination number to four in all but the outer rings of the polymer, will presumably weaken individual N—Li bonds. These materials dissolve quite readily in several polar solvents, e.g., THF (66), pyridine (66, 78, 85), and HMPA (86). Crystalline complexes can be recovered from these solutions. Two of these, both derivatives of (Ph2C=NLi) , have been characterized structurally in the solid state. The tetrameric cubane (Ph2C=NLipyridine)4 (7) is depicted in Fig. 14 (78, 85). 

Experimental trends in Si shielding observed experimentally arise from variations in the coordination number (i.e. the number of atoms in the 1st coordination sphere), the extent of polymerization of the silicate tetrahedra, the degree of replacement of one net-work forming cation by another (e.g. coupled Na+, Al+3 for Si+4 substitution), the size of the rings of tetrahedra present and the Si-O-Si angles (1,2). Similar trends are seen in gas-phase molecules, species in aqueous solution and in both crystalline and amorphous solids. Polarized double-zeta basis set Hartree-Fock level calculations using small molecular cluster models reproduce these trends semiquantitatively, as we will show. 

Thus obtained results show that the polyamorphic transitions occur not only at compression (Si02, H20, etc.) but at extension as well (C) in the systems having stable or metastable crystal analogs with a different density and a different coordination number z. At the minimal z=2 (chain structures) the transitions may occurs only at compression, at the maximal z=12 (close-packed structures) - only at extension, at the intermediate z (2structure-sensitive properties change and new metastable phases can appear. Amorphization under radiation (crystal lattice extension) can be associated with a softening of phonon frequencies. The transitions in the molecular glasses consisted from the molecules with unsaturated bonds are accompanied by creation of atomic or polymeric amorphous systems. 

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