Designing air-stable cyclometalated Fe(ii) complexes: stabilization via electrostatic effects.

Designing efficient Fe(ii) chromophores requires optimization of numerous, at times conflicting, properties. It has been suggested that replacement of polypyridine ligands with cyclometalated analogs will be effective at destabilizing the quintet state and therefore extending the lifetime of photoactive metal-to-ligand charge transfer states. However, cyclometalated Fe(ii) complexes are not oxidatively stable due to the strong electron-donating nature of this ligand, which limits their applicability.

How a redox-innocent metal promotes the formal reductive elimination of biphenyl using redox-active ligands.

One of the most compelling strategies for utilizing redox-active ligands is to perform redox events at the ligands to avoid accessing prohibitively high energy oxidation states at the metal center. This has been demonstrated experimentally in many systems, yet there is little understanding of the fundamental electronic structures involved with these transformations or how to control them. Here, the reductive elimination of biphenyl from [M(isq)2Ph2] (M = Ti, Zr, and Hf and isq = 2,4-di-tert-butyl-6-tert-butyliminosemiquinone) was studied computationally.