ABSTRACT. Metal cluster halides M6X'2 and M'6Xa and their alkali metal derivatives exhibit a variety of structure types because of the evident need to bond terminal or shared halide at all metal vertices. The versatility of systems with group 3 and 4 transition metals is greatly increased by the presence of interstitial heteroatoms (Z) within all thermodynamically stable clusters. The 24 examples of Z provide a wide range of valence electrons and include many that are themselves metals. Structural and bonding principles are described, including the novel characteristics of some cation sites, the regular effects that cations have on cluster bond distances, matrix effects that arise because of characteristic X··X or M -X distances and their influence on metal -metal bonding and electronic configurations, and the use of metal -metal hnl'1d orders to characterize matrix effects. The condensation products of octahedral clusters, particu:arly chains centered by heterometals and double-metal sheet products, are also noted.
Condensation to ClustersThe clustering of two to six (or more) metals within a nonmetal matrix is a frequent event among reduced compounds of the early transition (d) elements. The formation of such clusters is probably best known among the chalcogenides, while only a relatively few halide examples were known for Nb, Ta and Mo 10-15 years ago. The relative proportion of anions for a fixed oxidation state of a metal obviously increases in the series pnictide, chalcogenide, halide (e.g., Vp, V 2 S 3 , VCI 3 ), and so the number of possible metal-metal interactions decrease in parallel. Thus, highly reduced pnictides and chalcogenides often exhibit condensed, complex, and relatively isotropic structures, whereas halides more often show limited and lower dimensional interactions between the valence-active metals, i.e., in isolated clusters and chains. The latter characteristics not only provide very novel results but also make more evident many of the bonding and structural principles that go into the determination of cluster and condensed cluster structures. Much of the background to this area can be found in Schafer and Schnering (1964) and Wells (1984).The beginning of metal-metal bonding is often seen structurally whenever the stoichiometric number of nonmetals (halides) per metal in a reduced compound is less than the preferred coordination number so that coordination polyhedra must be shared. Thus, ZrI4 achieves CN6 by sharing two edges of each ZrI6 octahedron, viz, ZrI 2 1 4/2 . Only when valence electrons are available does this allow 27 E. Parthe (ed.).