Selective Manipulation of Well-Defined Trinuclear Pd(II)-Complexes

Several strategies are available to design well-defined multimetallic molecular entities bearing functional ligands. Substoichiometric exchange reactions in the coordination sphere of pre-existing multinuclear precursors are relatively underexploited in this context. Palladium(II) acetate is not a mononuclear compound in the solid state but rather exists as a trimer, i. e. [Pd3(OAc)6]. Although this material is ubiquitously used to synthesize mononuclear Pd species, it may principally also lend itself to selective exchange of some of the edge-sharing acetate units in its triangular motif, whilst keeping the overall multinuclear architecture intact. Strikingly, little is known about the controlled manipulation and substoichiometric substitution chemistry of this well-defined conglomerate. We herein conclusively demonstrate that, for the first time, the targeted exchange of two or four acetate units from the Pd3(acetate)6 platform is possible, thereby installing either one or two new tridentate ligands onto this trinuclear architecture. Follow-up exchange and substitution chemistry is available without disrupting the multimetallic nature of the core structure. New complexes 2-7 are all conclusively characterized using multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, UV-vis and IR spectroscopy as well as X-ray diffraction analysis.