Adsorbed acetone is held to silica surfaces by hydrogen bonds between surface silanols and the acetone carbonyl groups. Acetone is adsorbed by this mechanism on porous glass surfaces but there is also some decomposition, as shown by the increase in surface B-OH groups and by formation of new C-H absorptions at 2984 and 2940 cm-I. Experiments with boron-impregnated silica indicated that the presence of boron in the porous glass can account for this decomposition process. Bands at 1660-1670 and 1650 cm-', observed when acetone and acet0ne-d6, respectively, were adsorbed on either porous glass or boron-impregnated silica, are attributed to v((7=0) of the carbonyl group coordinated with a surface boron atom. The surface hydroxyls of both silica and porous glass could exchange with the deuterium of acetone-d6 via a mechanism involving an en01 intermediate. 47,2545 (1969) Recent work has shown that many of the differences in the surface properties of porous glass and pure silica can be attributed to the minority constituents on the glass (1, 2). Pure silica is relatively inert, but can be made "active," so that it resembles porous glass in behavior, by impregnating the silica with oxides such as alumina or boria. As much of the recent infrared (i.r.) work had been carried out with water (3) and nitrogenous compounds (4-6), it was thought desirable to extend the studies to oxygen-containing adsorbates such as methanol (7) and acetone, so that information would be available on the reactions of adsorbates having different "functional groups".
Canadian Journal of Chemistry,The present paper describes our attempts to characterize the interactions of acetone with porous glass and some silicas by i.r. techniques.The acetone -porous glass system has been examined previously (8,9), but the studies were brief. Also, i.r. studies involving adsorbates such as acetone are fraught with difficulty because there is always the possibility that grease may be transported from joints onto the adsorbent surface. In the present experiments we approached this problem by using acetone and acetone-d6 which were purified and stored in a grease-free acetone (Aldrich Chemical Co.) were stored and purified in a section of the apparatus made entirely from glass and Teflon stopcocks. These adsorbates were dried in vacuo over either anhydrous copper or calcium sulfates and degassed by freeze-pumpthaw cycles until no pressure burst was evident on the Pirani gauge. Infrared spectra of acetone and acetone-d6 in both the gas and liquid phase showed excellent agreement with the data of Dellepiane and Overend (10). Corning Grade 7930 porous glass was used in the form of 1 mm-thick plates. Thinner, ground samples (approx. 0.2 mm) were used in some experiments. Other samples were self-supporting discs of Cab-0-Sil (Cab-0-Sil M5 Silica, supplied by G . Cabot, Boston, Mass.), and of Cab-0-Sil impregnated with either 1 % of boron or 1 % of aluminium by the incipient-wetness method. All samples were outgassed in vacuo at 600' for 3 h, heated in 50 Torr oxyge...