Coordinative unsaturation oxide surface

This bimolecular coupling is a structure-sensitive reaction, and it illustrates a key characteristic of metal oxides multiple coordinative unsaturation of surface metal cations may facilitate coupling of ligands in a manner similar to that for unsaturated metal complexes in solution. Examples of other coupling reactions... 

Electrocatalysis employing Co complexes as catalysts may have the complex in solution, adsorbed onto the electrode surface, or covalently bound to the electrode surface. This is exemplified with some selected examples. Cobalt(I) coordinatively unsaturated complexes of 2,2 -dipyridine promote the electrochemical oxidation of organic halides, the apparent rate constant showing a first order dependence on substrate concentration.1398,1399 Catalytic reduction of dioxygen has been observed on a glassy carbon electrode to which a cobalt(III) macrocycle tetraamine complex has been adsorbed.1400,1401... 

The above is formally equivalent to the picture of a coordinatively unsaturated surface (CUS) put forward by Burwell et al. (8) in their discussion of chromia. The acid-base formalism does have the advantage of drawing attention to the analogy of acid and base catalyzed reactions. If a hydrocarbon undergoes reaction at these sites via loss of a proton to the oxide site, the reaction should be analogous to a base catalyzed reaction if it undergoes reaction via the loss of a hydride to the zinc site or addition of a proton from the oxide site, the reaction should be analogous to an acid catalyzed reaction. This view, which we find useful, is implicit in the discussion that follows. 

According to detailed XRD analyses, the two catalyst preparation procedures under study formed solid solutions. The application of sol-gel method led to improved selectivity to olefins in the reaction of propane ODH, compared to the simple procedure of evaporation and decomposition. However, the propane conversion on the sol-gel catalysts was lower at the same experimental conditions, while the catalysts surface area was higher. Moreover, the sol-gel samples presented higher basicity as shown by C02 TPD. It could be explained by a better incorporation of Nd into the AEO lattice, creating cationic vacancies for attaining electroneutrality and thus rendering the nearby oxide anions coordinatively unsaturated and more basic. 

In this chapter, we have discussed the application of metal oxides as catalysts. Metal oxides display a wide range of properties, from metallic to semiconductor to insulator. Because of the compositional variability and more localized electronic structures than metals, the presence of defects (such as comers, kinks, steps, and coordinatively unsaturated sites) play a very important role in oxide surface chemistry and hence in catalysis. As described, the catalytic reactions also depend on the surface crystallographic structure. The catalytic properties of the oxide surfaces can be explained in terms of Lewis acidity and basicity. The electronegative oxygen atoms accumulate electrons and act as Lewis bases while the metal cations act as Lewis acids. The important applications of metal oxides as catalysts are in processes such as selective oxidation, hydrogenation, oxidative dehydrogenation, and dehydrochlorination and destructive adsorption of chlorocarbons. 

The oxide surfaces prepared by condensation and polymerization of hydroxo metal ions (see Schneider, 1988 on iron(HI) hydrolysis) usually have lower coordination numbers than bulk oxide ions of the surface hydroxyles. Often the co-ordinatively unsaturated Mn+ site behaves like a Lewis acid and the coordina-tively unsaturated O2 ion is more basic than the bulk ions ... 

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