Optical acetylide metal complex

Recent studies have shown that o-acetylide metal complexes exhibit very encouraging third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties [85,86]. Hence, there is considerable current interest in o-acetylide complexes and conjugated, bridging, bimetallic systems. 

The chemistry of metal complexes featuring alkyne and alkynyl (acetylide) ligands has been an area of immense interest for decades. Even the simplest examples of these, the mononuclear metal acetylide complexes L MC=CR, are now so numerous and the extent of their reaction chemistry is so diverse as to defy efforts at a comprehensive review. " The utility of these complexes is well documented. Some metal alkynyl complexes have been used as intermediates in preparative organic chemistry and together with derived polymeric materials, many have useful physical properties including liquid crystallinity and nonlinear optical behaviour. The structural properties of the M—C=C moiety have been used in the construction of remarkable supramolecular architectures based upon squares, boxes, and other geometries. ... 

Especially in the early steps of the synthesis of a complex molecule, there are plenty of examples in which epoxides are allowed to react with organometallic reagents. In particular, treatment of enantiomerically pure terminal epoxides with alkyl-, alkenyl-, or aryl-Grignard reagents in the presence of catalytic amounts of a copper salt, corresponding cuprates, or metal acetylides via alanate chemistry, provides a general route to optically active substituted alcohols useful as valuable building blocks in complex syntheses. 

Alkynyl complexes contain metal-carbon bonds in which the metal is bound to the sp-hybridized carbon at the terminus of a metal-carbon triple bond. The materials properties of these complexes have been investigated extensively. The properties of these complexes include luminescence, optical nonlinearity, electrical conductivity, and liquid crystallinity. These properties derive largely from the extensive overlap of the metal orbitals with the ir-orbitals on the alkynyl ligand. The M-C bonds in alkynyl complexes appear to be considerably stronger than those in methyl, phenyl, or vinyl complexes. Alkynyl complexes are sometimes prepared from acetylide anions generated from terminal alkynes and lithium bases (e.g., method A in Equation 3.42), but the acidity of alkynyl C-H bonds, particularly after coordination of the alkyne to the transition metal, makes it possible to form alkynyl complexes from alkynes and relatively weak bases (e.g., method B in Equation 3.42). Alkynyl copper complexes are easily prepared and often used to make alkynylnickel, -palladium, or -platinum complexes by transmetallation (Equation 3.43). This reaction is a step in the preparation of Ni, Pd, or Pt alkynyl complexes from an alkyne, base, and a catalytic amoimt of Cul (Equation 3.44). This protocol for... 

One of the current trends in transition metal acetylide-containing polymers is the incorporation of heterocyclic rings into their backbones in order to alter their electronic and optical properties. " Scheme 14 shows the reaction of monomers 52 and 54 with the platinum complex 30 to produce polymers 54 and 55, respectively. The optical gap and intersystem crossing from the singlet to triplet states decreased with increasing conjugation in the polymers. 

---