Syntheses and structures of thermally stable diketiminato complexes of gold and copper

While most metallic elements across the Periodic Table form stable chelating beta-diketiminato complexes, examples of Au(I) are conspicuous by their absence. We report here the reaction of K[HC(F3CC=NR)(2)] with AuCl(PPh3) which provides a rare example of a thermally stable gold(I) diketiminato complex, (Ph3P)Au[RN=C(CF3)CH(CF3)C=NR] [R = 3,5-C6H3(CF3)(2)]. The complex is highly fluxional in solution but in the solid state adopts a U-conformation. By contrast, the analogous reaction of K[HC(F3CC=NR)(2)] with CuBr(PPh3)(3) gives the rigid 18-electron chelate complex (Ph3P)(2)Cu[kappa(2)-HC{(CF3)C=NR}(2)].