Highly coordinated atoms

In connection with the reasoning presented above, the work of Ponec and his associates (132, 362) should be recalled. Even though hydrogenol-ysis probably requires a multiply bound intermediate and should thus be favored on faces made up of high-coordination atoms, some systems show sympathetic behavior. This is explained by the preferential poisoning by carbon deposits on the faces as compared to the edges, so that after... 

An important reason for low coordination of iodide ions is that high coordination implies a high oxidation state of the central atom, which often (but not always) means high oxidising power— and this means oxidation of the easily oxidised iodide ligands. Thus the nonexistence of, for example, phosphorus(V) pentaiodide is to be explained by the oxidation of the iodide ligands and reduction of phosphorus to the -(-3 state, giving only PI3, not PI5. 

It can be readily confirmed thaf by decreases as the number of bonds N increases and/or llieir length (r ) decreases. This relationship between the bond strength and the number of neighbours provides a useful way to rationalise the structure of solids. Thus the high coordination of metals suggests that it is more effective for them to form more bonds, even though each individual bond is weakened as a consequence. Materials such as silicon achieve the balance for an infermediate number of neighbours and molecular solids have the smallest atomic coordination numbers. 

Some of the other features of this program are the ability to compute transition states, coordinate driving, conformation searches, combinatorial tools, and built-in visualization. The builder includes atoms and fragments for organics, inorganics, peptides, nucleotides, chelates, high-coordination geometries, and... 

Bismuthides. Many intermetaUic compounds of bismuth with alkafl metals and alkaline earth metals have the expected formulas M Bi and M Bi, respectively. These compounds ate not saltlike but have high coordination numbers, interatomic distances similar to those found in metals, and metallic electrical conductivities. They dissolve to some extent in molten salts (eg, NaCl—Nal) to form solutions that have been interpreted from cryoscopic data as containing some Bi . Both the alkafl and alkaline earth metals form another series of alloylike bismuth compounds that become superconducting at low temperatures (Table 1). The MBi compounds are particularly noteworthy as having extremely short bond distances between the alkafl metal atoms. 

When Li metal is cold-worked it transforms from body-centred cubic to cubic close-packed in which each atom is surrounded by 12 others in twinned cuboctahedral coordination below 78 K the stable crystalline modification is hexagonal dose-packed in which each lithium atom has 12 nearest neighbours in the form of a cuboctahedron. This very high coordination... 

To the structural generalizations on carborancs (p. 183) can be added the rule that, in metallocarboranes, the M atom tends to adopt a vertex with high coordination number. M occupancy of a low CN vertex is not precluded, particularly in kineiically controlled syntheses, but isomerization to more stable configurations usually results in the migration of M to high CN vertices. 

Table 26.2 also reveals a diminished tendency on the part of these elements to form compounds of high coordination number when compared with the iron group and, apart from [Co(N03)4], a coordination number of 6 is rarely exceeded. There is also a marked reluctance to form oxoanions (p. 1118). This is presumably because their formation requires the donation of n electrons from the oxygen atoms to the metal and the metals become progressively... 

This is characteristic for the activation of molecular tt bonds. The same principle was found to apply for stepped surfaces. It is also characteristic of other reactions with surface fragments that have strong repulsive interactions when they share binding with the same surface atom, for example, NH and O, which typically prefer bonding in high-coordination sites. 

Figure 13. Dependence of ethane hydrogenolysis TOF and apparent activation energy on Pt particle size. TOFs decrease by two orders of magnitude over the size range, while the apparent activation energy increases. Coordinatively unsaturated surface atoms in small particles have a higher reactivity and subsequently a smaller barrier for hydrogenolysis than highly coordinated surface atoms of larger particles. TOFs were measured at 20 Torr C2H6, 200 Torr H2, and 658 K [16]. (Reprinted from Ref [16], 2006, with permission from American Chemical Society.)...

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