Palladium hydrocarbon chemisorption

With the advent of sophisticated experimental techniques for studying surfaces, it is becoming apparent that the structure of chemisorbed species may be very different from our intuitive expectations.10 For example, ethylene (ethene, H2C=CH-2) chemisorbs on platinum, palladium, or rhodium as the ethylidyne radical, CH3—C= (Fig. 6.2). The carbon with no hydrogens is bound symmetrically to a triangle of three metal atoms of a close-packed layer [known as the (111) plane of the metal crystal] the three carbon-metal bonds form angles close to the tetrahedral value that is typical of aliphatic hydrocarbons. The missing H atom is chemisorbed separately. Further H atoms can be provided by chemisorption of H2, and facile reaction of the metal-bound C atom with three chemisorbed H atoms dif-... 

The importance of relativistic phenomena both in coordination complexes and in chemisorption has been reviewed. For complexes containing coordinated ethene or other unsaturated hydrocarbons, comparable quantitative information on all the Group 10 metals is extremely hard to come by, but calculations on various ethene and ethyne complexes (Table 4.13) performed by the non-local quasi-relativistic DF method are instructive. For each complex the bond energy is in the sequence Ni > Pt > Pd marked differences in the stabilities and reactivities of complexes of the type M"P2(CH3) (M = Pd, Pt P = PPhs) were also noted. In this context, it is never remarked that nearly all reactions homogeneously catalysed by metal salts or complexes, and metal-mediated reactions, involve elements from the first and second rows, and very rarely a third row element. Ruthenium, rhodium and palladium feature often osmium, iridium and platinum hardly at all. This is because very generally the complexes of the third row elements are too stable to be reactive. 

In one example, colloidal Pd particles are obtained by the electrolysis of aqueous solutions of palladium chloride at pH 1 in a two-layer bath in the presence of a hydrocarbon solvent and epoxy dianic resin or PVA. Electrolysis results in flie formation of colloidal palladium organosols stabilized by the chemisorption of tiie polymer. Metal-lopolymers containing up to 90-95% of Pd remain after the removal of solvent and residual electrolyte. They are formed under high cathode polarization where concomitant elimination of hydrogen adsorbed on the nanoparticles (5.5-7.S nm in diameter) occurs. 

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