A paper by Daniel Eppel was published in the journal “Chemistry – A European Journal”
In the paper “An Environmentally Friendly, Photochemical Access to [N^C^N]Au(III) Pincer Complexes by Oxidative Addition” Eppel et al. develop a very easy, photosensitizer-free, LED-mediated oxidative addition of diazonium salts to DMSAu(l)CI for the synthesis of cationic [N^C^N]Au(III) complexes bearing tetrafluoroborate as a counter anion.
Pincer ligands have many extraordinary features. The good control of the reactivity at the metal center due to a fixed, predetermined ligand geometry and their thermal stability, which results from the strong coordination of the donor atoms to the metal center, enables a manifold of applications in homogenous catalysis, especially for industry applications.
While neutral [C^N^C]gold(III) complexes are well studied, cationic [N^C^N] complexes have been investigated much less. This type of gold complexes is still limited to only a few specific examples and either highly toxic organomercury(II) compounds as transmetallation reagents or mostly a twofold excess of a gold precursor limit the synthetic potential of the used approaches.
The environmentally friendly, mercury-free protocol presented in the paper is the first easy synthesis of these types of pincer-complexes in moderate to excellent yield starting from a readily available gold(I) precursor with nitrogen as the only byproduct. In addition, the first arylated [N^C^N]Au(III) pincer-complex was synthesized by using this technology.
Congratulations to Daniel Eppel!