Inorganic material systems, photoelectron spectroscopy

Through a co-assembling route, mesostructured lamellar molybdenum sulfides are formed hydrothermally at about 85 °C using cationic surfactant molecules as the templates. The reaction temperature and the pH value of the reaction system are important factors that affect the formation of the mesostructured compounds. The amount of the template and that of the S source are less critical in the synthesis of the compounds. For the three as-synthesized mesostructured materials, the interlayer distance increases linearly with the chain length of the surfactant. Infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals that the individual inorganic layers for the three compounds are essentially the same both in composition and in structure. The formal oxidation state of the molybdenum in the materials is +4 whereas there exist S2 anions and a small amount of (S-S)2 ligands in the mesostructures. The successful synthesis of MoS-L materials indicates that mesostructured compounds can be extended to transition metal sulfides which may exhibit physico-chemical properties more diverse than non-transition metal sulfides because of the ease of the valence variation for a transition metal. 

A final example of a stereoselective heterogeneous catalytic system is the work of Laycock, Collacott, Skelton and Tchir.17 Layered double hydroxide (LDH) synthetic hydrotalcite materials were used to stereospecifically polymerize propylene oxide [PO] to crystalline isotactic and liquid atactic poly(propyleneoxide) [PPO]. These authors suggest that the LDH surface acts as other inorganic or organometallic coordination initiators or catalysts by providing specific surface orientations for propylene oxide monomer. X-ray powder diffraction showed some loss of crystallinity after calcination and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed an enhancement of Mg/Al content due to restructuring of the Mg and A1 surface atoms. The surface was also rich in Cl ... 

APPLICATION OF PHOTOELECTRON SPECTROSCOPY IN INORGANIC AND ORGANIC MATERIAL SYSTEMS... 

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