Syntheses and structures of thermally stable diketiminato complexes of gold and copper†
Abstract
While most metallic elements across the Periodic Table form stable chelating β-diketiminato complexes, examples of Au(I) are conspicuous by their absence. We report here the reaction of K[HC(F3CCNR)2] with AuCl(PPh3) which provides a rare example of a thermally stable gold(I) diketiminato complex, (Ph3P)Au[RNC(CF3)CH(CF3)CNR] [R = 3,5-C6H3(CF3)2]. The complex is highly fluxional in solution but in the solid state adopts a U-conformation. By contrast, the analogous reaction of K[HC(F3CCNR)2] with CuBr(PPh3)3 gives the rigid 18-electron chelate complex (Ph3P)2Cu[κ2-HC{(CF3)CNR}2].