On the incidence of non-covalent intramolecular interligand interactions on the conformation of carbene complexes: a case study.

The prevalence of a counterintuitive carbene conformation in a series of piano-stool Mn(I) alkylalkoxycarbene complexes was rationalized by means of DFT calculations and high-resolution XRD analysis in terms of stabilizing non-covalent C-H···C≡O interligand interactions.