Royal Society of Chemistry, Dalton Transactions, 13(43), p. 5095-5105, 2014
DOI: 10.1039/c3dt52101j
Full text: Unavailable
The isolation of six isomeric, low-symmetry, dicobaltacarboranes with bicapped hexagonal antiprismatic cage structures, always in low yield, is described from reactions in which 13-vertex cobaltacarborane anions and sources of cobalt-containing cations were present. The vertex-to-centroid distance (VCD) and boron-H distance (BHD) methods are used to locate the correct C atom positions in the cages, thus allowing the compounds to be identified as 1,13-Cp2-1,13,2,10-closo-Co2C2B10H12 (), 1,8-Cp2-3-OEt-1,8,2,10-closo-Co2C2B10H11 (), 1,13-Cp2-1,13,2,9-closo-Co2C2B10H12 (), 1,8-Cp2-1,8,2,4-closo-Co2C2B10H12 (), 1,13-Cp2-1,13,2,4-closo-Co2C2B10H12 () and 1,8-Cp2-1,8,2,5-closo-Co2C2B10H12 (). It is shown that a common alternative method of cage C atom identification, using refined (as B) Ueq values, does not work well, at least in these cases. Having identified the correct isomeric forms of the six dicobaltacarboranes, their syntheses are tentatively rationalised in terms of the direct electrophilic insertion of a {CpCo(+)} fragment into [CpCoC2B10](-) anions and it is demonstrated that compounds , , and can be successfully prepared by deliberately performing such reactions.