(25h) Catalytic Consequences of Stable Open Metal Clusters Synthesized Via Oxidative Treatments
AIChE Annual Meeting
2013
2013 AIChE Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Rational Catalyst Design
Sunday, November 3, 2013 - 5:15pm to 5:30pm
Oxidative treatment of single metal carbonyl complexes has been shown in literature to activate the metal complex for catalysis. We hypothesize that a similar in-situ oxidative treatment of supported metal carbonyl clusters or chemoselective oxidation of the Ir4 precursor will also create open sites, and that these treatments will result in a more active catalyst for hydrogenation reactions. Open sites consist of CO vacancies, which typically result in cluster instability during catalysis. We achieve stability and structural integrity via attachment of calixarene phosphine ligands to the Ir4 cluster core. We test this hypothesis of creating more catalytically active, yet stable, open metal clusters by using the structure insensitive C2H4 hydrogenation reaction.