A Unique Au-Ag-Au Triangular Motif in a Trimetallic Halonium Dication: Silver Incorporation in a Gold(I) Catalyst

As a result of explorations into the solution chemistry of silver/gold mixtures, a unique diphosphine trimetallic chloronium dication was discovered that incorporates silver-arene chelation and a triangular mixed gold/silver core in the solid state. Notably, it was isolated from a Celite prefiltered solution initially thought to be silver-free. The crystal structure also incorporates the coordination to silver of one fluorine atom of one SbF6- counterion. The structure was compared to two new, but well-precedented, phosphine digold chloride cations. DFT calculations supported significant silver-halide and silver-arene interactions in the mixed gold/silver complex and metallophilic interactions in all three complexes. Comparison of computed data revealed that the B97X-D functional, which has a long-range corrected hybrid with atom-atom dispersion corrections, gave a better fit to the experimental data compared with the PBE0 functional, which has previously failed to capture aurophilic interactions. Preliminary studies support the presence of the mixed gold/silver structure in solution.