Heterobimetallic lanthanide-coinage metal compounds featuring possible metal-metal interactions in the exited state.

Abstract

Heterometallic complexes, combining metals at the outer rim of the d-block, e.g. lanthanides(III) (Ln) and coinage metals(I) (M) are scarcely reported, synthetically challenging and highly interesting in terms of their interaction. In this context, we synthesized heterobimetallic Ln-M compounds ligated by the amidinate system (N,N -bis[(2-diphenylphosphino)phenyl]formamidinate, dpfam). The resulting compounds [dpfam 3 LnM][OTf] (Ln = La, Nd and M = Ag, Au) feature a close proximity of the two metal centers and were investigated experimentally by photoluminescence spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. The latter showed rare La-Au interactions for the first excited state.