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The relative amounts of hydrogen retained by a range of supported palladium catalysts have been investigated by a combination of electron microscopy and spectroscopic techniques, including incoherent inelastic neutron scattering. Contrary to expectation, the hydrogen capacity is not determined solely by the metal particle size, but it is a complex interaction between the particle size and its state of aggregation. The nature of the support is not only integral to the amount of hydrogen held by the catalyst, it also causes a marked difference in the rate of release of stored hydrogen from palladium. It is more difficult to fully dehydrogenate palladium on/in the porous activated carbon than on the non-porous carbon black based catalyst. The type of support also results in differences in the form of the residual hydrogen: whether it is α- or β-hydride phase, subsurface or in the threefold surface site. Our data on the supported catalysts reinforces what has only been seen previously with palladium black and our computational study provides confirmation of the empirical assignments. We also report the first vibrational spectroscopic study of hydrogen adsorbed at the surface of β-PdH and have observed for the first time hydrogen in the on-top site. This has enabled the relative proportion of bulk- to surface-H occupation in calculated model and in industrial nanoparticles to be estimated.

The X-ray crystal structure of the dodecameric lithium tert-butylperoxide [2] 12 is the first of an alkali or alkaline earth peroxide. It shows the lithium ion bridging the two oxygen atoms of the peroxide unit and a slight lenghtening of the O-O bond, in agreement with quantum-chemical calculations. A calculation for the model reaction of MeLi with LiOOH to give MeOLi and LiOH reveals the importance of Li bridging the O-O bond in the transition state of this reaction, as similarly discussed for many oxidation reactions of (transition-) metal peroxides. Preliminary theoretical studies of the O-O bond length (and thus of the oxenoid character) as a function of the aggregation of 2 disclose that increasing aggregation leads to stabilization of the charge at the anionic oxygen atom and thus to a reduction of the O-O bond length (oxenoid character). Related considerations of the effect of aggregation should also be valid for other lithium (organometallic) compounds and their structure and reactivity as well as other properties., (Copyright © 1996 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)