“…Indeed, the 31 Ps pectrum of ND-Rhs hows broad overlapping resonances extending from 15 to 72 ppm andasuperimposed narrower line centered at approximately 53 ppm, in addition to the peak at 37.3 ppm previously assignedt o phosphine oxide groups.T he occurrence of severelyb roadened and more or less structureless signals is very common for surface-bound Wilkinson-type trisphosphine complexes [35,[49][50][51] and resultsf rom the presence of ad istribution of disordered surfacee nvironments, [35,42,46,49,51] and the formationo facomplex mixture of surface-bound complexes, if the phosphine ligand is immobilized prior to its coordination to rhodium. Considering that Wilkinson's catalyst [46,49] and relatedt risphosphine Rh-complexes [35,42,50,51] exhibit chemical shifts between 20 and 80 ppm, and that the signals of the metal-boundp hosphorusa toms in the Rh complex 2 (Scheme 1B)d erived from catecholp hosphine 1 appear in the same region (chemical shifts are 53 and 27 ppm for the P, O-chelating and monodentate ligands, respectively), [47] the broad resonance at 25 ppm could be assigned to Rh-bound phosphines, whereas the narrower line at 53 ppm might evidence the presence of P, O-Rh chelates. To confirm this proposed assignment and further interpretthe 31 PMAS NMR spectrum,2Dhomonuclear J-resolved MAS NMR experiments were performed, allowing the measurement of cis-a nd trans-PÀRhÀP 2 J coupling constants in the solid state.…”