PREFACE
Downloaded by 80.82.77.83 on December 27, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: March 8, 1982 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1982-0179.pr001
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or at least the next decade, high temperature chemistry and technology are destined to play an important role in solving challenges now before the scientific community. Among these are the need to develop alternate energy sources and to institute more efficient materials conversion processes. The symposium upon which this book is based was intended to discuss these needs while providing a good mix of basic and applied high temperature science. Because high temperature chemistry is a broad discipline, a focus on a few key areas was chosen to encourage meaningful participation of the various scientific communities, applied as well as basic, industrial and governmental as well as academic. These areas include interactions of alkali metal atoms and dimer bonding, bonding in small metallic clusters, bonding and interactions of the alkali hydrides and halides and metal atom-water interactions, and applications of alkali metal and alkali compound vapors. These groupings are particularly timely, and their combination offers an intertwining of basic and applied research efforts. AH of the invited speakers in the various groupings have completed manuscripts included herein. In addition, about half of the contributed papers to the symposium were sufficiently close in content to the invited papers that these manuscripts are also included here. The topics considered in this symposium are of considerable current interest. Recent attention has been given to small metal clusters as models for surface imperfections and concomitantly as sites for catalytic activity. In addition, the characterization of small metal clusters may well add insight into the nature of metal-metal bonding in polynuclear organometallic compounds. These species are attracting considerable attention as homogeneous catalysts. The establishment of structural properties and the molecular electronic makeup of small clusters is now within the grasp of the physical chemist. This work promises to aid parameterizations on much larger species and hence offers the important prospect of interpolating between properties of the free atom and dimer and the metallic state. The elucidation of this middle ground between the micromolecular structure of small inorganic compounds and the macromolecular properties of the bulk metallic phase promises new insight that will undoubtedly be pertinent to the development of more efficient materials conversion processes. Since the alkali metals are theoretically simple ("visible hydrogen"), readily ionized, and strongly interacting with laser or solar light, they repix Gole and Stwalley,; Metal Bonding and Interactions in High Temperature Systems ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1982.
resent ideal systems for quantitatively understanding microscopic interconversion mechanisms between photon, chemical, electrical, and thermal energies. Thus the alkali metals and their compounds are playing an ever increasing role in practical applications (for example, sodium lamps, thermionic convertors, magnetohydrodynamics, lasers, and fusion reactors), which is reflected in the chapters on applications of alkali metals. It is hoped that these contributions will help bridge the gap between applied and basic research. JAMES L . G O L E
Downloaded by 80.82.77.83 on December 27, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: March 8, 1982 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1982-0179.pr001
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, G A 30332 W I L L I A M C. S T W A L L E Y
University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 August 1981
x Gole and Stwalley,; Metal Bonding and Interactions in High Temperature Systems ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1982.
