Mössbauer Spectroscopy and Organotin Polymers

Abstract

Mössbauer spectroscopy allows the structural analysis of certain metal atoms situated in complex structures. Briefly, Mössbauer spectroscopy is a resonant absorption spectroscopy that is observed best in isotopes having long lived, low-lying excited nuclear energy states. The largest recoil-free resonant cross-section is found for 57Fe. Currently, Mössbauer spectroscopy is being used on Mars to identify iron compounds that are present in the Martian landscape. There are over 20,000 entries in SciFinder for Mössbauer spectroscopy, of which the two largest entries are for iron and tin containing compounds. There are only about 100 entries for organotin compounds, with only a handful related to organotin-containing polymers. Mössbauer spectroscopy is an extremely powerful structural characterization tool that has been greatly overlooked because each Mössbauer spectrometer must be dedicated to a single element and measurements generally take hours to days to complete. This chapter deals with the study of a particular potentially important set of organotin polymers that illustrates the strength of this spectral technique.