Triamidoamine thorium-arsenic complexes with parent arsenide, arsinidiide and arsenido structural motifs.
Nat Commun 2017;
8:14769. [PMID:
28276437 PMCID:
PMC5347141 DOI:
10.1038/ncomms14769]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2016] [Accepted: 01/30/2017] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite a major expansion of uranium-ligand multiple bond chemistry in recent years, analogous complexes involving other actinides (An) remain scarce. For thorium, under ambient conditions only a few multiple bonds to carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and chalcogenides are reported, and none to arsenic are known; indeed only two complexes with thorium-arsenic single bonds have been structurally authenticated, reflecting the challenges of stabilizing polar linkages at the large thorium ion. Here, we report thorium parent-arsenide (ThAsH2), -arsinidiides (ThAs(H)K and ThAs(H)Th) and arsenido (ThAsTh) linkages stabilized by a bulky triamidoamine ligand. The ThAs(H)K and ThAsTh linkages exhibit polarized-covalent thorium-arsenic multiple bonding interactions, hitherto restricted to cryogenic matrix isolation experiments, and the AnAs(H)An and AnAsAn linkages reported here have no precedent in f-block chemistry. 7s, 6d and 5f orbital contributions to the Th-As bonds are suggested by quantum chemical calculations, and their compositions unexpectedly appear to be tensioned differently compared to phosphorus congeners.
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