Electron Counting in Ligated High Nuclearity Late Transition Metal Clusters

Over the years, the development of large ligated transition metal clusters has been accompanied by the development of theories using conceptual ideas and models which resulted in a range of electron-counting rules. All of them aimed to understand and rationalize the relationship between the structure and the electron count. Among these rules, those relying on the spherical jellium approximation, initially employed to study simple spherical alkali clusters, have shown to be very powerful to chemists interested in viewing ligated noble metal nanoclusters as superatoms, supermolecules or specific nano-objects with “magic” electron counts. This review develops the basic theory and illustrates its applications for specific spherical and non-spherical ligand-protected nanoclusters containing metals from groups 10 and 11.