Periodic trends in transition metal-hydrogen, metal-carbon, and metal-oxygen bond dissociation energies. Correlation with reactivity and electronic structure

The strengths of bonds formed between transition metals and various substituent groups are of fundamental importance in the areas of surface chemistry, organometallic chemistry, and catalysis. The scarcity of such thermodynamic information has led us to develop new experimental methods for the determination of the thermochemical properties of organometallic species. Most important are ion beam experiments in which an examination of the translational energy dependence of endothermic reactions yields bond energies of product species.