Ethene 64-65 precursor/intermediate species

The aim of this Section is to discuss the experimental methods, problems, and recent improvements in the determination of the exact nature of the precursor species Yi, Y2, Y3, etc. (i.e., the determination of the initiation mechanism for the ethene polymerization). Facing this topic, we must be aware that, besides the problems related to the determination of the Cr(II) structure (vide supra Section VI.A.2), the identification of the species formed during the initial stages of the reaction has been prevented so far for two other reasons (a) only a fraction of the Cr(II) sites are active in the polymerization under the usually adopted conditions (225), so that almost all the characterization techniques give information about the inactive majority Cr sites and (b) the active sites are characterized by a very high polymerization rate (high turnover frequency, TOF). It is thus clear that any experimental efforts devoted to the detection of the precursor and/or intermediate species must solve these two problems (vide infra Section VI.C). 

Di-cr-ethene has also been separately detected by spectroscopy but found to play a different mechanistic role related to its stronger bonding to the metal surface. This, not the 77-species, has been shown to be the precursor in the formation of ethylidyne by surface dehydrogenation on Pt(lll) and probably on other facets with triangular metal sites. Ethylidene is now the favored intermediate in this reaction (359,371,372,427), which can formally be represented as... 

High-pressure in situ ETIR and polymer matrix techniques were used to study the rhodium-catalyzed hydroformylation of 1-octene, 1-butene, propene, and ethene using Rh(acac)(CO)2 or Rh(acac)(CO)(PPh3) in a polyethylene matrix as the catalyst precursor. The acyl rhodium intermediates, RC(=0)Rh(C0)4 and RC(=0)Rh (CO)3(PPh3), were observed. It was found that the acyl rhodium tetracarbonyl intermediates easily react with ethene to form acyl rhodium tricarbonyl species RC(=0)Rh(C0)3(C2H4) [61]. Deuterioformylation of l-phenyl-l-(n-pyridyl)-ethenes in the presence of a phosphane-modified Rh4(CO)i2 as catalyst precursor was carried out at 100 bar of CO D2 = 1 1 and 80 °C at partial substrate conversion. On basis ofa direct NMR analysis of the crude reaction mixture, it was concluded that the branched alkyl rhodium intermediate is almost exclusively formed [62]. 

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