Synthesis of and structure-property relationships in zinc complexes of bis-metaphenylene semiquinone biradical species

The design of novel, functionalized bis-metaphenylene semiquinone (SQ) ligands and their corresponding metal complexes which combine conformational flexibility and electron-withdrawing, electron-donating, and conjugating substituents enable investigation of multiple structure–property relationships. Along these lines, we report the synthesis of three new bis(Zn II (SQ)Tp Cum,Me ) complexes containing the bis-metaphenylene coupling fragment. Using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, ab initio computations and superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry, we show how spin-density is affected by the bis-metaphenylene system substituents. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Supporting information may be found in the online version of this paper.