Scientists at ICIQ (Tarragona, Spain) and OSU (Oregon, US) created a new method to prepare chromium polyoxocations that, to date, represented a huge synthetic challenge. Analyzing a myriad of conditions and using all kind of state of the art techniques, researchers managed to understand and control the formation of chromium clusters.
Carles Bo, group leader at ICIQ, led the team that carried out the computational studies. These numerical experimentsconsidered all combinations, almost a thousand distinct structures, to explain the apparent disorder of the crystallographic sites and what conditions favour the formation of metallic clusters.
These findings will contribute to expand the understanding of crystallization of metal-oxide clusters and polycations. Such structures are key to many natural phenomena -photosynthesis, mineral growth- and industrial processes in material science.
###
Reference
"Crystallizing elusive chromium polycations." W. Wang, L.B. Fullmer, N.A.G. Bandeira, S. Goberna-Ferrón, L.N. Zakharov, C. Bo, D.A. Keszler and M. Nyman. Chem , 2016, DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2016.11.006
Embargoed URL: http://www.cell.com/chem/fulltext/S2451-9294(16)30233-9
Chem