Infrared, X-ray and microscopic studies on the room temperature structure of anhydrous lead (II) n-alkanoates

✍ Scribed by Henry A. Ellis; Nicole A.S. White; Richard A. Taylor; Paul T. Maragh

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 171 KB
• Volume: 738
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-2860
• DOI: 10.1016/j.molstruc.2004.12.006

✦ Synopsis

The room temperature structures of a series of even-chain length lead (II) n-alkanoates have been studied using infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and polarizing light microscopy. Whilst the bonding is the same for both long and short chain compounds, where four carboxylate groups form an unsymmetrical bidentate bond with a lead atom, with possible carboxylate bridging to adjacent lead atoms, at least for the short chain length compounds, the arrangement of hydrocarbon chains within a lamella is different. Both X-ray and microscopic studies show that for short chain compounds, hydrocarbon chains are arranged as bilayers within a lamella and tilted with respect to the lead basal plane. For the long chain compounds, it is proposed that the chains are arranged as a monolayer within a lamella, in an alternating arrangement, and slightly tilted with respect to the lead basal plane. For all the compounds, X-ray data point to a triclinic unit cell containing four molecules per unit cell with P 1 symmetry, and chains oriented along the c axis.