Shaping and enforcing coordination spheres: probing the ability of tripodal ligands to favour trigonal prismatic geometry.
We report two tripodal frameworks, mono(2,2'-bipyrid-6-yl)bis(2-pyridyl)methanol () and bis(2,2'-bipyrid-6-yl)mono(2-pyridyl)methanol () which have one and two bipyridyl arms, respectively. Both ligands form complexes with the first row transition metals. Both ligands appear to overcome the steric strain involved in twisting the ligand to produce an octahedral complex and the solid state structures in general show more octahedral character than complexes of the related ligand, tris(2,2'-bipyrid-6-yl)methanol (). Continuous Shape Mapping (CShM) calculations based on crystallographic data reveal that is incapable of enforcing a trigonal prismatic (TP) co-ordination geometry in the solid state, surprisingly even upon co-ordination to metals with no stereochemical preference such as cadmium (S(TP) = 7.15 and S(Oh) = 3.95). However, ligand clearly maintains an ability to enforce a trigonal prismatic conformation which is demonstrated in the crystal structures of the Mn(II) and Cd(II) complexes (S(TP) = 0.75 and 1.09, respectively). While maintains near-TP configurations in the presence of metal ions with strong octahedral preferences, distorts towards predominantly octahedral co-ordination geometries, increasing in the order Co(II) < Ni(II) < Fe(II) and no trigonal prismatic structures.
School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, South Glamorgan. amorosoaj@cf.ac.uk.
James C
JC
Knight
School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, South Glamorgan. amorosoaj@cf.ac.uk.
Angelo J
AJ
Amoroso
School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, South Glamorgan. amorosoaj@cf.ac.uk.
Peter G
PG
Edwards
School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, South Glamorgan. amorosoaj@cf.ac.uk.
Neha
N
Singh
School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, South Glamorgan. amorosoaj@cf.ac.uk.
Benjamin D
BD
Ward