Experimental and First-Principles NMR Analysis of Pt(II) Complexes With O,O'-Dialkyldithiophosphate Ligands.

Polycrystalline bis(dialkyldithiophosphato)Pt(II) complexes of the form [Pt{S2P(OR)2}2] (R = ethyl, iso-propyl, iso-butyl, sec-butyl or cyclo-hexyl group) were studied using solid-state 31P and 195Pt NMR spectroscopy, to determine the influence of R to the structure of the central chromophore. The measured anisotropic chemical shift (CS) parameters for 31P and 195Pt afford more detailed chemical and structural information, as compared to isotropic CS and J couplings alone. Advanced theoretical modeling at the hybrid DFT level, including both crystal lattice and the important relativistic spin-orbit effects qualitatively reproduced the measured CS tensors, supported the experimental analysis, and provided extensive orientational information. A particular correction model for the non-negligible lattice effects was adopted, allowing one to avoid a severe deterioration of the 195Pt anisotropic parameters due to the high requirements posed on the pseudopotential quality in such calculations. Though negligible differences were found between the 195Pt CS tensors with different substituents R, the 31P CS parameters differed significantly between the complexes, implying the potential to distinguish between them. The presented approach enables good resolution and a detailed analysis of heavy-element compounds by solid-state NMR, thus widening the understanding of such systems.

Characterisation of platinum-based fuel cell catalyst materials using 195Pt wideline solid state NMR.

This study demonstrates the utility of the novel Field Sweep Fourier Transform (FSFT) method for acquiring wideline (195)Pt NMR data from various sized Pt nanoparticles, Pt-Sn intermetallics/bimetallics used to catalyse oxidative processes in fuel cell applications, and various other related Pt3X alloys (X = Al, Sc, Nb, Ti, Hf and Zr) which can facilitate oxygen reduction catalysis. The (195)Pt and (119)Sn NMR lineshapes measured from the PtSn intermetallic and Pt3Sn bimetallic systems suggest that these are more ordered than other closely related bimetallic alloys; this observation is supported by other characterisation techniques such as XRD. From these reconstructed spectra the mean number of atoms in a Pt nanoparticle can be accurately determined, along with detailed information regarding the number of atoms present effectively in each layer from the surface. This can be compared with theoretical predictions of the number of Pt atoms in these various layers for cubo-octahedral nanoparticles, thereby providing an estimate of the particle size. A comparison of the common NMR techniques used to acquire wideline data from the I = 1/2 (195)Pt nucleus illustrates the advantages of the automated FSFT technique over the Spin Echo Height Spectroscopy (SEHS) (or Spin Echo Integration Spectroscopy (SEIS)) approach that dominates the literature in this area of study. This work also presents the first (195)Pt NMR characterisation of novel small Pt13 nanoclusters which are diamagnetic and thus devoid of metallic character. This unique system provides a direct measure of an isotropic chemical shift for these Pt nanoparticles and affords a better basis for determining the actual Knight shift when compared to referencing against the primary IUPAC shift standard (1.2 M Na2PtCl6(aq)) which has a very different local chemical environment.