Ferrocene
has been adsorbed on the surface of silica and activated
carbon within the pores by dry grinding in the absence of a solvent
at room temperature. While the dry adsorption and translational mobility
of ferrocene within the pores are already established on the centimeter
scale, there is little systematic understanding of the surface site-to-site
motions of the ferrocene molecules and their orientation with respect
to the surface. In this paper, silica and activated carbon, both widely
applied in academia and industry as adsorbents, are used as support
materials. Using variable-temperature 13C and 2H solid-state NMR and T
1 relaxation time
measurements, the dynamics of ferrocene on the surfaces of silica
and activated carbon within the pores has been quantitatively characterized
on the molecular scale. The obtained data indicate that ferrocene
molecules show a liquid-like behavior on the surface. Fast exchange
between isotropically moving molecules and surface-attached molecular
states of ferrocene has been found in samples with submonolayer surface
coverages. The surface-attached molecular states have been characterized
by the free energies ΔG
⧧ of
6.1 kcal/mol for silica and ΔG
⧧ of 6.2 kcal/mol for activated carbon at 223 and 263 K, respectively.
The horizontally oriented ferrocene molecules are the most thermodynamically
stable states on the surfaces of both materials. These molecules exhibit
fast C5 rotation of the Cp rings, as established by low-temperature 13C and 2H NMR. The interactions of ferrocene with
the pore surfaces have been characterized by adsorption enthalpies
measured as −8.4 to −7.0 kcal/mol and −6.7 kcal/mol
for activated carbon and silica, respectively. It has been suggested
that the ferrocene–surface interactions for both support materials
have a polar character.