The ligand polyhedral model and its application to the fluxional behaviour of M 4(CO) 12− n (M  Co, Rh, Ir; n = 1, 2, 4 clusters

Abstract

A number of mechanisms have been previously proposed to explain the observed fluxional behaviour of related cluster species of the general type M 4(CO) 12− n L n (M  Co, Rh, Ir; n = 1, 2, 4). Here, a combination of metal core libration and an icosahedral-anticubeoctahedral-icosahedral ligand polyhedral rearrangement, arising from the ligand polyhedral model, is used to account for this observed behaviour. The ideas proposed are general and may be applied to all systems containing icosahedral, cubeoctahedral or anticubeoctahedral ligand shells.