Bridgette J. Duncombe

Probing the self-assembly of inorganic cluster architectures in solution with cryospray mass spectrometry: growth of polyoxomolybdate clusters and polymers mediated by silver(I) ions.

Cryospray mass spectrometry (CSI-MS) has been used to probe the mechanism of self-assembly of polyoxometalate clusters in solution. By using CSI-MS and electronic absorbance spectroscopy it was possible to monitor in real-time the self-assembly of polymeric chains based on [Ag 2Mo 8O 26] (2-) n building blocks. The role of the Ag (I) ion in the solution state rearrangement of molybdenum Lindqvist ({Mo 6}) into the silver-linked beta-octamolybdate ({Mo 8}) structure (( n-C 4H 9) 4N) 2 n [Ag 2Mo 8O 26] n ( 1) is revealed in unprecedented detail. A monoanionic series, in particular [AgMo m O 3 m+1 ] (-) where m = 2 to 4, and series involving mixed oxidation state polyoxomolybdate species, which illustrate the in-solution formation of the (Ag{Mo 8}Ag) building blocks, have been observed. CSI-MS detection of species with increasing metal nuclearity concomitant with increasing organic cation contribution supports the hypothesis that the organic cations used in the synthesis play an important structure-directing role in polyoxometalate (POM) growth in solution. A real-time decrease in [{Mo 6}] and associated increase in [{Mo 8}] have been observed using CSI-MS and electronic absorbance spectroscopy, and the rate of {Mo 6} interconversion to {Mo 8} was found to decrease on increasing the size of the countercation. This result can be attributed to the steric bulk of larger organic groups hindering {Mo 6} to {Mo 8} rearrangement and hindering the contact between silver cations and molybdenum anions.

A Gas-Phase Study of the Preferential Solvation of Mn2+ in Mixed Water/Methanol Clusters

The kinetic shift that exists between two competing unimolecular fragmentation processes has been used to establish whether or not gas-phase Mn2+ exhibits preferential solvation when forming mixed clusters with water and methanol. Supported by molecular orbital calculations, these first results for a metal dication demonstrate that Mn2+ prefers to be solvated by methanol in the primary solvation shell.

The solvation of Mg2+ with gas-phase clusters composed of alcohol molecules.

The dication Mg2+ has been clustered with a range of different alcohols to form [Mg(ROH)N]2+ complexes, where N lies in the range 2-10. Observations on the chemistry of the complexes reveal two separate patterns of behavior: (i) unimolecular metastable decay, where at small values of N the complexes undergo rapid charge separation via Coulomb explosion; and (ii) electron capture-induced decay, where collisional activation promotes bond-breaking processes via charge reduction. For the latter it has been possible to identify a generic set of reactions that are common to all of the different [Mg(ROH)N]2+ complexes; however, there are examples of reactions that are specific to individual alcohols and values of N. For metastable decay, it is shown that there is a clear correlation between the value of N at which a complex ceases to be metastable and the ionization energy of R, the radical that forms the complementary ion in the Coulomb explosion step. Metastable decay in two of the [Mg(ROH)N]2+ complexes follows a very different pathway that eventually results in proton abstraction. It is suggested that this difference is due to the precursor complexes adopting geometries that have at least one ROH molecule in a secondary solvation shell.