Unusual structures and reactivity of mixed metal cluster complexes containing the palladium/platinum tri-t-butylphosphine grouping.

Polynuclear metal carbonyl complexes have a range of applications in chemical research: for example, they can serve as surface models to probe features of heterogeneous catalysis and can perform novel transformations of organic molecules in solutions. Mixed metal complexes can demonstrate bimetallic cooperativity and synergism and can also serve as precursors to multimetallic heterogeneous catalysts that have superior activities and selectivities. This Account describes the results of our recent comprehensive study of the chemistry of mixed metal cluster complexes containing the sterically encumbered M(PBu(t)(3)), M = Pd or Pt, group. This grouping readily adds to the metal-metal bonds of metal carbonyl cluster complexes and modifies their reactivity. We have prepared new, highly electronically unsaturated mixed metal complexes that exhibit unusually high reactivity toward hydrogen. The platinum atom of the Pt(PBu(t)(3)) grouping can bond to as many as five metal atoms, and it can interconvert, sometimes rapidly, between the different bonding modes. The large steric effects of the PBu(t)(3) ligand allowed us to prepare highly unsaturated, stable, mixed-metal complexes, and these complexes react with hydrogen, sometimes reversibly, under very mild conditions to yield polyhydride complexes. Strong evidence suggests that the Pt(PBu(t)(3)) group can also activate metal-hydrogen bonds in other complexes. In the future, we expect that researchers will prepare a greater variety of mixed metal complexes containing the Pd/Pt(PBu(t)(3)) group or other similar bulky groups, and that some of these complexes will exhibit even more unusual chemistry than what we have observed so far.