Murielle F. Delley

TL;DR: This Review discusses how surface organometallic chemistry (SOMC) engineers surface sites with well-defined structures and provides insight into the nature of the active sites of industrial catalysts; the Review focuses in particular on olefin production and conversion processes.

TL;DR: Examination of the spent catalyst and isotope labeling experiments showed the formation of a Si-(μ-OH)-Cr(III) species, consistent with an initiation mechanism involving the heterolytic activation of ethylene at Cr( III) O bonds.

TL;DR: The reactivity of well-defined chromium silicates toward ethylene and propane is described and it is found that these materials, slightly contaminated with a minor amount of Cr(II) sites, have poor polymerization activity and few active sites, in contrast, chromium(III) silicates have 1 order of magnitude higher activity.

TL;DR: It is shown through combined experimental and density functional theory modeling approaches that mononuclear tricoordinate Cr(III) sites immobilized on silica polymerize ethylene by the classical Cossee–Arlman mechanism initiate and regulate the polymer chain length via unique proton transfer steps in polymerization catalysis.

TL;DR: DNP SENS provides molecular-level information about the structure of surface sites by evidencing the presence of tri-, tetra-, and pentacoordinated Y-surface sites and unprecedented evidence and tools to assess the local structure of metal surface sites in relation to their chemical and physical properties.