A novel tetranuclear CuI complex with a flexible monothioether ligand

The reaction of a flexible monothioether ligand, 2-[(o-pyridyl)-sulfinylmethyl]-pyridine (L), with CuI leads to the formation of a novel complex [CU4I4(L)(2)] (1), which has been characterized by elemental analyses, IR spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography. Single-crystal X-ray analyses show that complex 1 contains two kinds of crystallographic independent complex molecules, and both of them have similar tetranuclear structures with a distorted chair-like Cu4I4 skeleton. In the packing mode of complex 1, there exist S... S weak interactions between one kind of tetranuclear molecules and intermolecular pi-pi contacts in two kinds of tetranuclear molecules. These weak interactions not only stabilize the structure of the complex, but also further link the tetranuclear molecules into a high-dimensional supramolecular architecture. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.