School of Chemistry, The Polytechnic of North London, Holloway, London N7 8DB, U.K.
Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QR, U.K.
Abstract:
The recently developed electron-counting rules for condensed polyhedral metal carbonyl clusters have been utilised to develop a systematic approach for enumerating the structural alternatives for metal cluster compounds which are isoelectronic. The more usual cluster degradation and aggregation processes are represented in a matrix form which relates the change in electron count to the number of new bonds formed (or broken). The matrices for cluster degradation and aggregation are represented in a complementary fashion so that the search for isoelectronic clusters greatly simplified. The utility of the approach is illustrated by reference to some recent examples from metal carbonyl cluster chemistry.