Reactivity of Metal Clusters

We summarize here the research advances on the reactivity of metal clusters. After a simple introduction of apparatuses used for gas-phase cluster reactions, we focus on the reactivity of metal clusters with various polar and nonpolar molecules in the gas phase and illustrate how elementary reactions of metal clusters proceed one-step at a time under a combination of geometric and electronic reorganization. The topics discussed in this study include chemical adsorption, addition reaction, cleavage of chemical bonds, etching effect, spin effect, the harpoon mechanism, and the complementary active sites (CAS) mechanism, among others. Insights into the reactivity of metal clusters not only facilitate a better understanding of the fundamentals in condensed-phase chemistry but also provide a way to dissect the stability and reactivity of monolayer-protected clusters synthesized via wet chemistry.