Chemically Modified Surfaces in Catalysis and Electrocatalysis

In recent years, considerable attention has been given to methods in which organic and inorganic surfaces are chemically modified in order to increase their usefulness in catalytic processes. The materials resulting from such chemical modifications have considerable potential as alternatives to conventional homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. For example, homogeneous catalysts immobilized on an organic or inorganic support can in principle possess both the experimental advantages of typical heterogeneous catalysts and the reactivity and selectivity of their homogeneous analogs. Immobilized metal clusters can be used as catalysts themselves or as precursors to highly dispersed metal crystallites or as precursors to metal oxide particles. Immobilization of transition metal complexes and metal clusters both provides reliable routes to a type of heterogeneous catalyst whose nature and mechanism may be more readily understood and, potentially, offers ways to manipulate metal particle and crystallite size to achieve new types of catalytic reactions. Surface modification of