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chemistry books, and come to a completely new understanding.” leges on cluster chemistry and catalytic materials. But what hap- John gave me his bill: it was US$130,000, which I paid. But pens is the metal-metal bonds are still retained by the material. he said, "Dave, I have separated it physically and] have checked _—_ So, if you buy rhodium trichloride from Johnson, Matthey & it chemically 50 different ways. You have 4 to 6 ounces per ton = Engelhardt, you are actually getting RhiwCls or RhsCls. You of palladium, 12 to 14 ounces per ton of platinum, 150 ounces per _ really aren't getting RhCls. There is a difference between the ton of osmium, 250 ounces per ton of ruthenium, 600 ounces per _— metal-metal bonding material and the free ions. What you are ton of iridium, and 800 ounces per ton of osmium.” These were buying is cluster chemistry; you are not getting free ions. When almost the exact same numbers that the spectroscopist had told you put the material in for the instrumentation to analyse, it is me were there. It was such an incredible number that John said, —_ actually the metal-metal bonds of the cluster that are analysed. "Dave, I've got to go to the natural place where this stuff comes —_ The instrumentation is not really analysing the free ions. from and I've got to take my own samples." I heard that General Electric was building fuel cells using So he went up and actually walked the property and took his _— rhodium and iridium. So I made contacts with their fuel-cell peo- own samples, put them in a bag, brought them back to the labora- _ ple back in Massachusetts and travelled there to meet with them. tory, pulverised the entire sample and then started doing the They had three attorneys meet with us, and the GE people were analysis on what is called the master blend sample which repre- _ there. The attorneys were there to protect the GE people because sents the whole geology—and he got the same numbers. a lot of people say they have technologies and they meet with We worked on this from 1983 until 1989—one Ph.D. chemist, them; then after the meeting they sue them, claiming that GE three master chemists, two technicians working full-time. Using stole their technology. Then, to defend themselves, GE has to the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ and the US Bureau of Standards’ — divulge what their technology really is. So GE is very sceptical weights and measures information as a starting point, we literally | when you say that you have something new. They bring in their learned how to do qualitative and . . - high-faluting attorneys to really screen quantitative separations of all of these you. elements. We learned how to take After about an hour they said, "These commercial standards and make them "So the material hadn't guys are for real. You attorneys can i . We hi 1431) ee ] ." That be they hi i thodium tichorde. asthe metal, from | WOlatilised away. It was still Bes ine explosions. They knew tha Johnson, Matthey & Engelhardt and there. it just couldn't be when they buy the commercial rhodium we learned how to break all the metal- on ae : | era trichloride it analyses very well. But to metal bonding until it was literally a weighed any more. That s make it ready to go into their fuel cells red solution but no rhodium was when everybody said, 'This they have to do salt effusions on it, where detectable. And it was nothing but * + te ot a te Een they melt the salt and put the metal in pure rhodium from Johnson, Matthey just isn't right; it can't be! with it to disperse it further. They know & Engelhardt. We learned how to do ‘@ that when they do that, the metal doesn't it with iridium, we learned how to do analyse as well any more. So when we it with gold, we learned how to do it told them that we had material that didn't with osmium, we learned how to do it with ruthenium. This is analyse at all, they could conceive how this was possible. They what we found when we actually purchased a machine for high- _ had never seen it, but they said, "We are interested.” pressure liquid chromatography. Now these are the people, GE, who build analytical instrumen- For your information, this person named John Sickafoose was _ tation. They said, “Dave, why don't you just make a bunch of the man who actually wrote his Ph.D. thesis at Iowa State _ rhodium for us and send it to us and we'll mount it in our fuel-cell University on how to build this instrument. He conceptualised technology. We'll see if it works in a place where only rhodium building this instrument back in 1963-64. After he graduated, | works. What is the mechanism of conversion of monatomic some of the graduate students there took that technology and rhodium to metallic rhodium in these fuel cells?” developed it, and eventually Dow Chemical came in and bought No other metal has ever been found which will perform the it. Dow went ahead and commercialised it and now jt is the most _ catalysis in the hydrogen-evolving technology of the fuel cell, sophisticated chemical separation instrument that the world has. other than rhodium and platinum. And rhodium is unique com- It's computer-controlled, all high-pressure, and you can do very _ pared to platinum because rhodium does not poison with carbon precise separations with it. Because this is the man who concep- = monoxide and platinum does. They said, "Dave, we'll just run it tualised and designed it and told them what the limitations would to see if it's a hydrogen-evolving catalyst and, if it is, then we will eventually be on it, he was the ideal man to take the technology _ see if il is carbon monoxide-stable and, if it is, then it's rhodium and perfect it. or it's a rhodium alternative.” So we were able to use their basic technology and develop a So we worked for about six months and refined that amount of separation system for the rhodium trichloride. We actually sepa- material and we re-refined it and re-refined it. We wanted to be rated five different species in the commercial rhodium trichloride. absolutely sure that this was really clean stuff. We didn't want What this is all about is that the word "metal" is like the word any problems with this. We sent it back to Tony LaConti at GE. “army”. You can't have a one-man army. The word "metai" GE, by that time, had sold their fuel-cell technology to United refers to a conglomerate material. It has certain properties: elec- | Technologies who already had a fuel-cell technology. All the GE trical conductivity, heat conduction, and all these other aspects. —_ fuel-cell people had to go work for United Technologies, and, When you dissolve the metals in acid, you get a solution that is since United Technologies already had their in-house people, the clear without solids. You assume it's a free-ion solution, but | GE people were not integrated into the existing teams. So all the when you are dealing with noble elements they're still not free | GE people were junior people; they weren't senior any more. ions. It's what is called "cluster chemistry". Since the 1950s there has been a whole area of research in col- Continued on page 72 NEXUS ¢ 33 Continued on page 72 AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996