Aurophilic Interactions of Dimeric Bisphosphine Gold(I) Complexes Pre-Organized by the Structure of the 1,5-Diaza-3,7-Diphosphacyclooctanes

The dimeric gold(I) chloride and gold(I) iodide complexes ([L2Au]Cl2 and L2AuI2) on the scaffold of the cyclic bisphosphine, namely 1,5-diaza-3,7-diphosphacyclooctane containing α-phenylbenzyl (benzhydryl) substituents at the nitrogen atoms, were synthesized. The obtained complexes were isolated as white crystalline powders. The single crystal XRD of the obtained complexes revealed the strong aurophilic interactions between two gold(I) atoms with the Au…Au distance values of 2.9977(6) and 3.1680(5) Å. The comparison of the gold complexes, based on the N,N-diaryl- and N,N-dibenzhydryl substituted 1,5-diaza-3,7-diphosphacyclooctanes, allowed to reveal the strong impact of the initial heterocycle conformation on the realization of the aurophilic interactions, where the geometry of N,N-dibenzhydryl substituted 1,5-diaza-3,7-diphosphacyclooctane, is pre-organized for the intramolecular aurophilic interactions of the complexes. The obtained complexes exhibit a bluish-green phosphorescence (λem 505 (-Cl) and 530(-I)) in the solid state at room temperature, originated by the metal-halide centered transitions, which was confirmed by the TDDFT calculations. It was found that the aurophilic interactions are realized in the ground and in the triplet excited states of the complexes. The slighter change of the geometry of the N,N-dibenzhydryl substituted gold(I) iodide complexes, under the transition from the ground state to the excited state, in comparison with their N,N-diaryl substituted analogues, results in the reduced values of the Stokes shift of luminescence (ca. 150 nm vs. 175 nm).