Electronic structure of transition metal clusters

Wang L S and Wu H 1998 Probing the electronic structure of transition metal clusters from molecular to bulk-like using photoeieotron spectroscopy Cluster Materials, Advances In Metal and Semiconductor Clusters vo 4, ed M A Duncan (Greenwich JAI Press) p 299... 

Electronic structures of transition metal cluster complexes. M. C. Manning and W. C. Trogler, Coord. Chem. Rev., 1981, 38, 89-138 (406). 

The electronic structure of transition metal cluster complexes with weak- and strong-field ligands. G. P. Kostikova and D. V. Korol kov, Russ. Chem. Rev. (Engl. Transl.), 1985,54, 344 (137). 

The electronic structure of transition metal clusters is difficult to probe by electronic absorption spectroscopy, which has proved so fhiitful in revealing the d orbital orderings of classical complexes, because of the multiplicity of overlapping absorption bands. The one-to-one correlation between occupied orbitals and PE bands means that PES can give valuable information on the smaller clusters. The information obtained has given support to the semiempirical theoretical treatments of this class of molecules. 

A more powerful experimental technique to probe the electronic structure of transition-metal clusters is size-selected anion photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) [70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75 and 76]. In PES experiments, a size-selected anion cluster is photodetached by a fixed wavelength photon and the kinetic energies of the photoemitted electrons are measured. PES experiments provide direct measure of the electron affinity and electronic energy levels of neutral clusters. This technique has been used to study many types of clusters over a large cluster size range and can probe how the electronic structures of transition-metal clusters evolve from molecular to bulk [77. 78. 79, 80 and M] Research has focused on the 3d transition-metal clusters, for which there have also been many theoretical studies [82, M, M, 86, M and 89]. It is found that the electronic structure of the small transition-metal clusters is molecular in nature, with discrete electronic states. However, the electronic structure of the transition-metal clusters approaches that of the bulk rapidly. Figure Cl. 14 shows that the electronic structure of vanadium clusters with 65 atoms is already very similar to that of bulk vanadium [90]. Other 3d transition-metal clusters also show bulk-like electronic structures in similar size range [78]. 

Analysis of the valence-band spectrum of NiO helped to understand the electronic structure of transition-metal compounds. It is to be noted that th.e crystal-field theory cannot explain the features over the entire valence-band region of NiO. It therefore becomes necessary to explicitly take into account the ligand(02p)-metal (Ni3d) hybridization and the intra-atomic Coulomb interaction, 11, in order to satisfactorily explain the spectral features. This has been done by approximating bulk NiO by a cluster (NiOg) ". The ground-state wave function Tg of this cluster is given by,... 

A classical example of correlation of structure with valence electron count of transition-metal clusters is shown in Fig. 19.4.2. There the structures of a series of osmium clusters are systematized by applying the capping and decapping procedures. 

A comprehensive study of periodic trends in the electronic structures of transition-metal sulfides using MS-SCF-Aa calculations was undertaken by Harris (1982) and Harris and Chianelli (1984). This study employed clusters (see Chapter 6) and led to a suggestion that the... 

In this article we have shown that the electronic structures of transition metal compounds based on a cubic architecture can be rationalized, by use of results obtained from molecular orbital calculations, leading to some interesting extensions of the electron-counting PSEP rules. Indeed, the cluster topology of the different cubic cluster categories is highly dependent on several parameters which can be calibrated. 

Concelcao J, Laaksonen R T, Wang L S, Guo T, Nordlander P and Smalley R E 1995 Photoelectron spectroscopy of transition metal clusters correlation of valence electronic structure to reactivity Rhys. Rev. B 51 4668... 

Ames Laboratory (Iowa State University, USA) investigating new solid state phases based on reduced rare earth halides. Since 1993, she has held a position at the University Jaume 1 of Castello (Spain) and became Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry in 1995. During the second semester of 2005, she held a visiting professor position at the Laboratory of Chemistry, Molecular Engineering and Materials of the CNRS-Universtity of Angers (France). Her research has been focussed on the chemistry of transition metal clusters with special interest in multifunctional molecular materials and the relationship between the molecular and electronic structures of these systems with their properties. She is currently coauthor of around 80 research papers on this and related topics. 

Although there are a lot of publications on the chemistry of technetium [2-4] and transition-metal clusters [1,5-8], the chemistry of technetium clusters was insufficiently studied until the early eighties [1,2]. Nevertheless, the available scanty data on the compounds with Tc-Tc bonds inspired hope that interesting results would be obtained in the chemistry of technetium in general, in radiochemistry, and in the chemistry of transition-metal cluster compounds. The anticipated results were actually obtained [9-15] and the conclusion was drawn that technetium had a number of anomalous cluster-forming properties [9]. This review looks at the detailed studies of these properties and their interpretation in terms of electronic structure theory. 

The bonding capabilities of transition metal clusters (no nonmetals in the framework), based on molecular orbital calculations, has been nicely summarized by Lauher14 (Table 16.3). Within this table we see three structures (tetrahedron, butterfly, and square plane) for tetranuclear metal clusters. The tetrahedron is a 60-electron cluster, while the butterfly and square plane clusters have 62 and 64 electrons. respectively. When we go from a tetrahedron to a butterfly, one of the edges of the tetrahedron is lengthened corresponding to bond breaking. 

The electronic state calculations of transition metal clusters have been carried out to study the basic electronic properties of these elements by the use of DV-Xa molecular orbital method. It is found that the covalent bonding between neighboring atoms, namely the short range chemical interaction is very important to determine the valence band structure of transition element. The spin polarization in the transition metal cluster has been investigated and the mechanism of the magnetic interaction between the atomic spins has been interpreted by means of the spin polarized molecular orbital description. For heavy elements like 5d transition metals, the relativistic effects are found to be very important even in the valence electronic state. 

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