Nanosized Homopalladium and Heteronickel/Heteropalladium Carbonyl Clusters

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This research especially focuses on homopalladium and bimetallic Pd-Ni, Pd-Pt, Pd-M (where M is Cu, Ag, Au), and Pt-Au carbonyl clusters, because they are of potential technological importance as ideal precursors in the design of new materials with useful catalytic, electronic, magnetic, and/or optical behavior. A major goal is to devise preparative pathways under controlled conditions to produce new, nanosized metal clusters in reasonably good yields to enable physical/chemical studies. Clusters under study include homopalladium ones with 35, 39, 52, 54, 59, 66, and 145 metal atoms in their cores and similarly large heterometallic ones with a number of other metals. Collaborations have been established to carry out particular state-of-the-art measurements and high-level theoretical calculations on a number of the unprecedented nanostructured materials, including comparative analyses of physical properties and electronic structures of these normally well-defined, homogeneous ligated clusters (of which at least several should possibly possess mesometallic behavior) with those of naked. and ligated nanoparticles of the same metals with narrow size distributions. This research capitalizes on synthetic breakthroughs to make new materials involving large nanoscaled metal complexes. The research has possible relevance to commercial catalysts widely used in many organic reactions. Students will be trained in the synthesis and physical measurements of nanosized materials.