Probing the structures and bonding of size-selected boron and doped-boron clusters
Because of their interesting structures and bonding and potentials as motifs for new nanomaterials, size-selected boron clusters have received tremendous interest in recent years. In particular, boron cluster anions (B n − ) have allowed systematic joint photoelectron spectroscopy and theoretical st...
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| Published in | Chemical Society Reviews Vol. 48; no. 13; pp. 3550 - 3591 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
01.07.2019
Royal Society of Chemistry |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Because of their interesting structures and bonding and potentials as motifs for new nanomaterials, size-selected boron clusters have received tremendous interest in recent years. In particular, boron cluster anions (B
n
−
) have allowed systematic joint photoelectron spectroscopy and theoretical studies, revealing predominantly two-dimensional structures. The discovery of the planar B
36
cluster with a central hexagonal vacancy provided the first experimental evidence of the viability of 2D borons, giving rise to the concept of borophene. The finding of the B
40
cage cluster unveiled the existence of fullerene-like boron clusters (borospherenes). Metal-doping can significantly extend the structural and bonding repertoire of boron clusters. Main-group metals interact with boron through s/p orbitals, resulting in either half-sandwich-type structures or substitutional structures. Transition metals are more versatile in bonding with boron, forming a variety of structures including half-sandwich structures, metal-centered boron rings, and metal-centered boron drums. Transition metal atoms have also been found to be able to be doped into the plane of 2D boron clusters, suggesting the possibility of metalloborophenes. Early studies of di-metal-doped boron clusters focused on gold, revealing ladder-like boron structures with terminal gold atoms. Recent observations of highly symmetric Ta
2
B
6
−
and Ln
2
B
n
−
(
n
= 7-9) clusters have established a family of inverse sandwich structures with monocyclic boron rings stabilized by two metal atoms. The study of size-selected boron and doped-boron clusters is a burgeoning field of research. Further investigations will continue to reveal more interesting structures and novel chemical bonding, paving the foundation for new boron-based chemical compounds and nanomaterials.
Photoelectron spectroscopy in conjunction with theoretical calculations has been used to investigate size-selected boron clusters, uncovering interesting structures and bonding. |
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| Bibliography: | Xuenian Chen received his BS and MS degrees from Lanzhou University in China, and his PhD from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He did postdoctoral work and was then appointed Research Scientist at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University. He is currently Distinguished Professor in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Henan Normal University, China. His research interests are in boron chemistry, organometallics, catalysis, and materials science. Lai-Sheng Wang received his BS degree in chemistry from Wuhan University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He did postdoctoral work at Rice University and is currently Jesse H. and Louisa D. Sharpe Metcalf Professor of Chemistry at Brown University. His research involves experimental studies of size-selected nanoclusters using photoelectron spectroscopy. His research group also pioneered the application of electrospray ionization for spectroscopic studies of solution anions in the gas phase and has developed cryogenically-cooled quadruple ion-trap techniques to create cold singly- and multiply-charged anions for spectroscopic investigations. Tian Jian received his BS degree in Chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China in 2011, and his PhD in Chemistry from Brown University in 2017. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow in the heavy element chemistry program of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His is interested in studying the gas-phase chemistry of size-selected clusters using mass spectrometry, photoelectron spectroscopy, and infrared multiple photon dissociation spectroscopy. Alexander I. Boldyrev received his BS/MS (1974) in chemistry from Novosibirsk University, his PhD in physical chemistry from Moscow State University, and his Dr Sci. in chemical physics from Moscow Physico-Chemical Institute (1984). He is currently Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Utah State University. His current scientific interest is the development of new chemical bonding models for clusters, molecules, solid-state materials, novel two-dimensional materials and other chemical species, where conventional chemical bonding models are not applicable. Si-Dian Li, Professor of chemistry at Shanxi University, got his BSc from Beijing Normal University in 1985, MSc from Shanxi University in 1988, and PhD from Xian Jiao-Tong University in 2003. His fields of interests include experimental and theoretical researches in structural chemistry, materials science, and computational chemistry, with over 150 papers published in various international journals. He has been carrying out joint investigations on planar tetracoordinate carbons, boronyl (BO) complexes, and all-boron fullerenes (borospherenes) with colleagues from the University of Sussex, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Brown University in the past three decades. Jun Li is a theoretical and computational chemist. He received his PhD in Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1992 and did postdoctoral research in Germany and USA from 1993 to 1997. He then worked in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (USA) as a senior research scientist and chief scientist before joining Tsinghua University as a full professor. He is an elected AAAS Fellow and is currently the Director of the Theoretical Chemistry Center, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University. He works in the fields of theoretical heavy-element chemistry, computational catalysis, and cluster science with ∼300 publications and ∼18 000 citations. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 ObjectType-Review-3 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0306-0012 1460-4744 1460-4744 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c9cs00233b |