Recent Advances in Hydride Chemistry

This book has been conceived to collect the most important recent advances in all areas of hydride chemistry research, including chemical reactivity, instrumental investigation, theory, and applications in the areas of catalysis, biochemistry and materials science.

Many of the chapters have been written by the plenary lecturers of the EURO-Hydrides 2000 conference, but other leading scientists in this field have also been invited to contribute.

The first part of the book focuses on the chemistry and catalysis of transition metal hydrides.

Another block of chapters illustrates the most recent advances in the application of instrumental techniques to the study of the properties and reactivity of hydride compounds.

The final part of the book illustrates the relevance of metal-hydrogen bonds in biochemistry and materials science.

All of the chapters of this book have been evaluated by independent reviewers.

Chapter headings. Non-classical hydrogen bonding along the pathway to the heterolytic splitting of dihydrogen. Protonation of transition metal hydrides to give dihydrogen complexes: mechanistic implications and catalytic applications. Hydrides and hydrogen bonding: combining theory with experiment. Hydridicity of transition metal hydrides and its implications for reactivity. Heterolytic cleavage of dihydrogen by ruthenium and molybdenum complexes. Paramagnetic mono- and polyhydrides of the transition metals. Ruthenium- and osmium- hydride compounds containing triisopropylphosphine as precursors for carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom coupling reactions. New trends in organolanthanide hydride chemistry. Dihydrogen metal complexes in catalysis. Mechanistic aspects of dihydrogen activation and catalysis by dinuclear complexes. Mechanistic aspects of inorganic chemistry probed via the parahydrogen phenomenon. NMR relaxation studies of polynuclear hydrides derivatives. Deuterium NMR relaxation as a method for the characterization and study of transition metal hydride systems in solution. Dihydrogen bonded complexes and proton transfer to hydride ligands by spectral (IR, NMR) studies. Quantum mechanical phenomena in dihydrogen and polyhydride transition metal systems: a unified view. Metal hydride intermediates in hydrogenases and nitrogenases: enzymological and model studies. Proton wave functions in palladium studied by ab initio calculations and inelastic neutron scattering methods. Hydrides for hydrogen storage.