Zinc oxide ethylene adsorption

Over zinc oxide it is clear that only a limited number of sites are capable of type I hydrogen adsorption. This adsorption on a Zn—O pair site is rapid with a half-time of less than 1 min hence, it is fast enough so that H2-D2 equilibration (half-time 8 min) can readily occur via type I adsorption. If the active sites were clustered, one might expect the reaction of ethylene with H2-D2 mixtures to yield results similar to those obtained for the corresponding reaction with butyne-2 over palladium That is, despite the clean dideutero addition of deuterium to ethylene, the eth-... 

The shift in the C=C frequency, vi, for adsorbed ethylene relative to that in the gas phase is 23 cm-1. This is much greater than the 2 cm-1 shift that is observed on liquefaction (42) but is less than that found for complexes of silver salts (44) (about 40 cm-1) or platinum complexes (48) (105 cm-1). Often there is a correlation of the enthalpy of formation of complexes of ethylene to this frequency shift (44, 45). If we use the curve showing this correlation for heat of adsorption of ethylene on various molecular sieves (45), we find that a shift of 23 cm-1 should correspond to a heat of adsorption of 13.8 kcal. This value is in excellent agreement with the value of 14 kcal obtained for isosteric heats at low coverage. Thus, this comparison reinforces the conclusion that ethylene adsorbed on zinc oxide is best characterized as an olefin w-bonded to the surface, i.e., a surface w-complex. 

Adsorption of ethylene as an olefinic species would not be likely to occur on the zinc half of the active site. A rigid ethylene molecule could not approach the sequestered zinc ions because of steric restrictions hence, ethylene would be confined primarily to the oxide part of this layer. In... 

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