Crystal structure of an unknown solvate of {2,2'-[ethane-1,2-diylbis(nitrilo-methanylyl-idene)]diphenolato-κ(4) O,N,N',O'}(N-ferrocenylisonicotinamide-κN (1))cobalt(II): a Co(II)-salen complex that forms hydrogen-bonded dimers.

The title compound, [CoFe(C5H5)(C16H14N2O2)(C11H9N2O)], was prepared as an air-stable red-brown solid by mixing equimolar amounts of {2,2'-[ethane-1,2-diylbis(nitrilo-methanylyl-idene)]diphenolato}cobalt(II) and N-ferrocenylisonicotinamide in dry di-chloro-methane under nitro-gen and was characterized by ESI-MS, IR, and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The structure at 100 K has triclinic (P-1) symmetry and indicates that the complex crystallizes as a mixture of λ and δ conformers. It exhibits the expected square pyramidal geometry about Co, and forms hydrogen-bonded dimers through amide N-H groups and phenolate O atoms on an adjacent mol-ecule. The involvement of only half of the salen ring structure in hydrogen-bonding inter-actions results in slight folding of the salen ring away from the pyridine coordination site in the δ conformer with an inter-salicyl-idene fold angle of 9.9 (7)°. In contrast, the λ conformer is nearly planar. The dimers pack into an open structure containing channels filled with highly disordered solvent mol-ecules. These solvent molecules' contributions to the intensity data were removed with the SQUEEZE procedure [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9-18] available in PLATON.