High-Spin and Reactive Fe Cluster with Exposed Metal Sites.

Atomically defined large metal clusters have applications in new reaction development and preparation of materials with tailored properties. Expanding the synthetic toolbox for reactive high nuclearity metal complexes, we report a new class of Fe clusters, Tp* W Fe S , displaying a Fe core with M-M bonds that has precedent only in main group and late metal chemistry. M clusters with closed shell electron configurations can show significant stability and have been classified as superatoms. In contrast, Tp* W Fe S displays a large spin ground state of S=13. This compound performs small molecule activations involving the transfer of up to 12 electrons resulting in significant cluster rearrangements.