Surface Organometallic Chemistry on Metal: Synthesis, Characterization and Application in Catalysis

“Surface Organometallic Chemistry on Metals” (SOMC/metals) can be defined first by the study at a very fundamental level of the synthesis, structure, stoichiometric and catalytic reactivity, of any organometallic compound with any surface of a “reduced” metal particle. In principle this field is very broad considering the huge variety of complexes that have been made in the last century or so and the vast variety of nanoparticles that have been made or can be made using almost all the elements of the periodical table. The field of SOMC/metals which started by means of supported particles has been recently enlarged to unsupported particles. The advantage of using “unsupported” particles eventually called “nanoparticles” is not the small size of these “unsupported” particles nor their narrow distribution. Supported “particles” are usually smaller than the unsupported ones and they have also very narrow particle size distribution. The real advantage of using unsupported nanoparticles, is the elimination of a support side effects: some bi-functional catalysis is avoided which makes catalytic interpretation more simple and allows to grow the particles by a mechanism of crystal growth allowing the formation of certain types of surface structures