Research news, Sept. 15th, 2015

 Well-defined Butadienyl Organocopper(I) Aggregates from Zirconacyclopentadienes and CuCl: Synthesis and Structural Characterization

 

Liang Liu, Weizhi Geng, Qi Yang, Wen-Xiong Zhang, and Zhenfeng Xi*

Organometallics 2015, 34, 4198-4201.

  Organocopper compounds are structurally very interesting and synthetically very useful. Isolable and structurally well-defined alkenyl organocopper(I) compounds are very rare.

 

  In this work, two examples of mixed alkenyl/aryl organocopper(I) aggregates possessing conjugated alkenyl/aryl C–Cu bonds were synthesized by transmetallation of zirconaindenes with CuCl. Single crystal X-ray structural analysis revealed tetrameric and hexameric structures. Butadienyl copper(I) aggregates were also synthesized and structurally characterized for further comparison. Preliminary reaction chemistry of the copper(I) aggregates were studied.