Probing C-O bond activation on gas-phase transition metal clusters: Infrared multiple photon dissociation spectroscopy of Fe, Ru, Re, and W cluster CO complexes

The binding of carbon monoxide to iron, ruthenium, rhenium, and tungsten clusters is studied by means of infrared multiple photon dissociation spectroscopy. The CO stretching mode is used to probe the interaction of the CO molecule with the metal clusters and thereby the activation of the C-O bond. CO is found to adsorb molecularly to atop positions on iron clusters. On ruthenium and rhenium clusters it also binds molecularly. In the case of ruthenium, binding is predominantly to atop sites, however higher coordinated CO binding is also observed for both metals and becomes prevalent for rhenium clusters containing more than nine atoms. Tungsten clusters exhibit a clear size dependence for molecular versus dissociative CO binding. This behavior denotes the crossover to the purely dissociative CO binding on the earlier transition metals such as tantalum. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3257687]