Talk:Cluster chemistry

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I removed some stuff which may be true for some clusters, but is definitely not true for all clusters. The problem is that the article previously pretended that it is, in fact, true for all clusters in chemistry. For instance, small carbon clusters are linear, non polycyclic structures. Also, there are many types of clusters that are not necessarily composed of three-membered rings, such as the fullerenes and II-VI metal chalcogenide clusters. Here is what I removed:

The shape of a cluster is based upon a trangular-faced polyhedron, also known as a deltahedron. Using a set of semi-empirical rules devised by K. Wade and extended by M. Mingos known either as Wade's Rules or Polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory it is possible to determine, often unambiguously, the shape of a cluster from its chemical formula.

Ed Sanville 22:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Indeed clusters are deltahedral

For those that work in this area, dimetallic compounds or in fact any old linear chain is not a cluster. At least for transition metal end of this, as defined some years ago by Cotton. So the verbage on Re2Cl8 etc is not about clusters. In fact the Re2 species are building blocks to clusters quite analogous to acetylene being a building block to benzene. As mentioned above, clusters contain at minimum triangles. The boron and zintl worlds think the same way. Also they have M---M bonding of some sort, so that basic iron acetate etc would not qualify. So the article currently is pretty misleading. --Smokefoot 13:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Hi Smokefoot, then you have an issue with reference 1 listed in the text. Are dimetallic compounds really that alien from trimetallics and higher ups? V8rik 16:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

V8rik: Apparently I was wrong and misinformed, dimetallics are clusters to many people. Thank you,--Smokefoot 02:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)