Mechanistic Studies in Polymer Matrices

As described earlier, high pressure cells have been developed for the use of noble gases as solvents for IR spectroscopic studies, either at low temperature, or at ambient temperature where the supercritical phase exists. A particular focus of this work was the study of reactive complexes containing coordinated noble gas atoms or molecular H2, the latter being particularly relevant to hydrogenation reactions. 

These Rh complexes have been the subject of intense interest due to their propensity for C-H activation of alkanes (Section 3.3.2.7). The noble gas complexes [CpRh(CO)L] and [Cp Rh(CO)L] (L = Kr, Xe) have also been studied in supercritical fluid solution at room temperature [120]. For both Kr and Xe, the Cp complex is ca. 20-30 times more reactive towards CO than the Cp analogue. Kinetic data and activation parameters indicated an associative mechanism for substitution of Xe by CO, in contrast to Group 7 complexes, [CpM(CO)2Xe] for which evidence supports a dissociative mechanism. 

The photocatalytic hydrogenation of alkenes and dienes by Group 6 metal carbonyls has been investigated in LNG solvents [15]. Photolysis of trans-[M(C0)4(C2H4)2] (M = Cr, Mo, W) in liquid xenon doped with H2 leads to formation of mer-[M(CO)3(C2H4)2(q -H2)] and ds-[M(CO)4(C2H4)(q -H2)]. The q -H2 complexes for M = Cr and Mo are much less stable than those for M = W. The evidence supported -coordination of H2 rather than oxidative addition to give dihy- 

---