A method for designing a novel class of gold-containing molecules

We propose a novel class of gold-containing molecules, which have been designed using conjugated carbon structures as templates. The sp-hybridized carbons of C-2 moieties are replaced with a gold atom and one of the adjacent carbons is replaced by nitrogen. Applying the procedure to hexadehydro[12]annulene yields the well-known cyclic trinuclear gold(i) carbeniate complex. Planar, tubular and cage-shaped complexes can be obtained by taking similar sp-hybridized carbon structures as the starting point.