Structure and Bonding in Transition-Metal Clusters

It is clear that aromaticity and antiaromaticity could be very useful concepts in explaining structure, stability, and other molecular properties of isolated and embedded clusters of transition metals and transition metal oxide clusters. The chemical bonding in transition metal clusters can come from s-AOs, p-AOs, and d-AOs, and can be expressed as a variety of multiple aromaticities and antiaromaticities as well as of conflicting aromaticities. 

Abstract This chapter reviews the methods that are useful for understanding the structure and bonding in Zintl ions and related bare post-transition element clusters in approximate historical order. After briefly discussing the Zintl-Klemm model the Wade-Mingos rules and related ideas are discussed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the jellium model and special methods pertaining to bare metal clusters with interstitial atoms. 

The electron counting rules of Wade (S3), Williams (117), and Rudolph (118) can serve as a useful concept to explain structure and bonding in a variety of systems which at first glance are very different Zintl phases, boranes and carboranes, transition metal n complexes and carbonyl clusters, nonclassical carbocations, and also n complexes of main-group elements. According to... 

Current interest in metal cluster compounds has arisen from the demonstration that metal-metal bonds play a key role in determining the chemistry of large classes of compounds, in particular, those with heavy metal atoms in low valent states. The occurrence of metal-metal bonding in transition metal complexes has been surveyed 21, 26, 59, 271, 275), and the criteria for metal-metal bonding and the factors contributing to the stability of such bonds have been discussed. Schafer and Schnering Sll) and more recently Keppert and Vrieze 229) have reviewed the lower halide, oxide, and oxyhalide clusters of the heavier transition metals. Cotton 102) has considered the transition metal clusters in terms of structural types, and a similar approach has been adopted in a review of molecular polyhedra of high coordination number 309). 

G. Schmid, Developments in Transition Metal Cluster Chemistry. The way to Large Clusters. Structure and Bonding , Springer, Berlin, v. 62, 1985. 

Hughbanks, T. Corbett, J. D. (1989). Encapsulation of Heavy Transition Metals in Iodide Clusters. Synthesis, Structure, and Bonding of the Unusual Cluster Phase YglioRu, Inorg. Chem. 28, 631 -635. 

Although there are a lot of publications on the chemistry of technetium [2-4] and transition-metal clusters [1,5-8], the chemistry of technetium clusters was insufficiently studied until the early eighties [1,2]. Nevertheless, the available scanty data on the compounds with Tc-Tc bonds inspired hope that interesting results would be obtained in the chemistry of technetium in general, in radiochemistry, and in the chemistry of transition-metal cluster compounds. The anticipated results were actually obtained [9-15] and the conclusion was drawn that technetium had a number of anomalous cluster-forming properties [9]. This review looks at the detailed studies of these properties and their interpretation in terms of electronic structure theory. 

That transition metal-carbonyl clusters, which contain an apparent abundance of electrons, might have much in common with boranes and carboranes, notorious for their deficiency of electrons, appears at first sight improbable. However, the structural and bonding relationship between them becomes apparent if one considers certain metal-carbonyl clusters for which localized bond treatments are unsatisfactory. 

The efforts to rationalize the formulas and structures of Zintl ions and related species predated extensive definitive structural information on anionic post-transition metal clusters obtained by Corbett and his group in the 1970s [8, 9]. After enough such structural information on the bare post-transition metal clusters became available, the resemblance of their polyhedra to the known polyhedral boranes became apparent. For this reason, the simple Zintl-Klemm concept has been largely superseded by newer, more advanced descriptions of chemical bonding in such clusters, initially those applied to the polyhedral boranes. 

It has been long known that for a given transition-metal cluster the open-shell and the closed-shell species may differ. Typically, metal-ligand bond lengths are elongated for the open-shell structures, where the metal centers carry local spins and electrons occupy antibonding orbitals, in comparison to their closed-shell... 

The political justification for transition metal cluster chemistry is the assumption that clusters are models in which metallic properties may be more easily studied than in the metals themselves. These properties include electronic phenomena such as color and conductivities as well as surface phenomena, such as atom arrangements and catalytic activities. Thus, there are two main lines of cluster research. The more academic line leads to the search for new types of clusters and their structure and bonding, whereas the more practical line leads to the investigation of reactivities with the hope that clusters may open catalytic pathways that neither plain metals nor mononuclear catalysts can provide. The interdependence of both lines is obvious. 

Considerable advances in the field of transition metal cluster chemistry have been made during the last five years. They have confirmed that in many respects a cluster complex is comparable to a metallic surface. They have also shown that clusters allow reactions which are not observed with simple metal complexes. And they have finally demonstrated that structural and bonding properties of clusters require new concepts for their description. 

The bonding capabilities of transition metal clusters (no nonmetals in the framework), based on molecular orbital calculations, has been nicely summarized by Lauher14 (Table 16.3). Within this table we see three structures (tetrahedron, butterfly, and square plane) for tetranuclear metal clusters. The tetrahedron is a 60-electron cluster, while the butterfly and square plane clusters have 62 and 64 electrons. respectively. When we go from a tetrahedron to a butterfly, one of the edges of the tetrahedron is lengthened corresponding to bond breaking. 

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