Trapping Iron(III)-Oxo Species at the Boundary of the Oxo Wall: Insights into the Nature of the Fe(III)-O Bond

Terminal non-heme iron(IV)-oxo compounds are among the most powerful and best studied oxidants of strong C-H bonds. In contrast to the increasing number of such complexes (>80 thus far), corresponding one-electron-reduced derivatives are much rarer and presumably less stable, and only two iron(III)-oxo complexes have been characterized to date, both of which are stabilized by hydrogen-bonding interactions. Herein we have employed gas-phase techniques to generate and identify a series of terminal iron(III)-oxo complexes, all without built-in hydrogen bonding. Some of these complexes exhibit similar to 70 cm(-1) decrease in nu(Fe-O) frequencies expected for a half-order decrease in bond order upon one-electron reduction to an S = 5/2 center, while others have nu(Fe-O) frequencies essentially unchanged from those of their parent iron(IV)-oxo complexes. The latter result suggests that the added electron does not occupy and orbital with Fe=O antibonding character, requiring an S = 3/2 spin assignment for the nascent Fe-III-O- species. In the latter cases, water is found to hydrogen bond to the Fe-III-O- unit, resulting in a change from quartet to sextet spin state. Reactivity studies also demonstrate the extraordinary basicity of these iron(III)-oxo complexes. Our observations show that metal-oxo species at the boundary of the Oxo Wall are accessible, and the data provide a lead to detect iron(III)-oxo intermediates in biological and biomimetic reactions.