Gold chloride, triphenylphosphine

Hydrogen tetrachloroaurate(l —), H[AuCl4]nH20, or brown gold chloride, was obtained from Johnson Matthey this compound is quite hygroscopic, and may plate out gold on metal spatulas. Triphenylphosphine was obtained from BDH Chemicals. 

Tributylphosphine sulfide has been used as a co-catalyst with dicobalt octacarbonyl for the Pawson-Khand reaction. Thermolysis of a mixture of cadmium chloride and trioctylphosphine sulfide at 250 °C has been used as a route to the formation of nanocrystalline cadmium sulfide." A complex of triphenylphosphine sulfide with a silver-tungsten-iodine acceptor has been characterised by X-ray studies. Ferrocenylphosphine chalcogenides have attracted considerable interest as ligands. Complexes of the monophosphino-phosphine sulfide (269) with rhodium have been characterised." The disulfide (270) forms complexes with both gold(i) and gold(iii) acceptors," and a silver(i) complex of the diselenide (271) has been prepared. ... 

The mechanism of reaction of a variety of triphenylphosphinealkyl-gold(i) complexes, and of triphenylphosphinetrimethylgold(iii), with mercury(n) chloride in a variety of solvents is St2. But when the alkyl group is cyano(ethoxycarbonyl)pentyl then the mechanism is dissociative. Decomposition of triphenylphosphine-n-butylcopper must involve initial formation of butene and a transient copper hydride rather than of n-butyl radicals, since no octane can be detected in the ultimate products. ... 

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