The structural diversity of heterocycle-fused potassium cyclopentadienides

Cyclopentadienides of d- and f-elements are highly important complexes with undoubted potential for practical applications. Annelation of a heterocyclic fragment with an η5-ring results in substantial improvement of the catalytic properties of these compounds, called “heterocenes”; the investigation of metal coordination with these specific ligands is a highly important problem. We prepared potassium derivatives 5–8 of heterocycle-annelated cyclopentadienes with different structures – derivatives of cyclopenta[1,2-b:4,3-b′]dithiophene (1), indeno[2,1-b]indole (2), indeno[1,2-b]indole (3), and indeno[1,2-b]indolizine (4) and studied the crystal and molecular structures of these salts by X-ray diffraction. We found that heterocycle-fused cyclopentadienides demonstrate remarkable diversity in metal–ligand coordination modes and crystal packing, with formation of two-dimensional polymeric (5), linear polymeric (6), tetrameric (7) and monomeric (8) structures. The NMR spectral data and results of DFT modeling indicate an increase in electron density in the cyclopentadienyl fragment, and this effect was found to be larger in the derivative of the new indolizine ligand precursor 4. The results of our study will be used in the design of next-generation catalysts of α-olefin polymerization.