Gallium chemistry

Relatively few organic compounds of gallium have been described, indicating that gallium chemistry is still in a stage where most of the progress is achieved by synthetic work rather than through study of reactions and physical properties. 

A. J. Downs, ed.. Chemistry of Aluminium, Gallium, Indium, oA Thahum, Roudedge, Chapman, and Had, London, June 1993. 

The person whose name is most closely associated with the periodic table is Dmitri Mendeleev (1836-1907), a Russian chemist. In writing a textbook of general chemistry, Mendeleev devoted separate chapters to families of elements with similar properties, including the alkali metals, the alkaline earth metals, and the halogens. Reflecting on the properties of these and other elements, he proposed in 1869 a primitive version of today s periodic table. Mendeleev shrewdly left empty spaces in his table for new elements yet to be discovered. Indeed, he predicted detailed properties for three such elements (scandium, gallium, and germanium). By 1886 all of these elements had been discovered and found to have properties very similar to those he had predicted. 

After spending considerable time perusing the crumbling pages of late nineteenth-century chemistry journals and textbooks, I have confirmed the traditional account Mendeleev s periodic law attracted little attention. . . until chemists started to discover some of the elements needed to fill the gaps in his table and found that their properties were remarkably similar to those he had predicted. The frequency with which the periodic law was mentioned in-journals increased sharply after the discovery of gallium, most of that increase was clearly associated with Mendeleev s prediction of the properties of the new element, (p, 617)20... 

The chemistry has also been extended to related formamidinato metal hydrides of aluminum and gallium. In the case of aluminum, LiAlH4 and AlH3(NMe3) served as metal hydride precursors. Scheme 39 summarizes the synthetic routes. The complexes thus formed are thermally very stable. °... 

For a discussion of the atomic properties of the group 13 metals see Downs AJ (1993) In Downs AJ (eds) Chemistry of aluminum gallium, indium and thallium. Blackie, London, Chapter 1... 

Paver MA, Russell CA, Wright DS (1995) Gallium, Indium and Thallium excluding Transition Metal Derivatives. In Abel EW, Stone FGA, Wilkinson G (eds) Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry II. Elsevier, Oxford UK, vol 1, chap Up 503... 

A. C. Bond jr., and H. I. Schlesinger Lithium Aluminium Hydride, Aluminium Hydride and Lithium Gallium Hydride, and some of their Applications in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. J. Amer. chem. Soc. 69, 1199 (1947). 

Indium and gallium coordination compounds containing phosphine ligands have recently aroused interest for their widespread application as intermediates in the preparation of the Group 13 - Group 14 semiconductors [4], Since the early reports about compounds with transition metal-indium bonds [51, relatively little research has been reported in this field. However there is a growing interest in the coordination chemistry and structural features of heterometallic indium [6] and gallium complexes [7] which are also attractive as potential precursors of new materials with particular properties. 

Grjotheim, K., Krohn, C., Malinovsky, M., Matiaskovsky, K., and Thonstad, J., Aluminium Electrolysis—Fundamentals of the Hall-Herault process, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1982, 17. Palmear, I. J., in The Chemistry of Aluminium, Gallium, Indium, and Thallium, Downs, A. J., Ed., Blackie, London, 1993, 87. 

This chapter is intended to highlight the synthesis and use of geminal bimetallic compounds such as gem-metallozirconocenes, but we will concentrate on the chemistry of aluminum, boron, lithium, gallium, germanium, tin, zinc, and zirconium. 

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