NMR investigation of non-covalent aggregation of coordination compounds ranging from dimers and ion pairs up to nano-aggregates

This review summarizes the results recently obtained by our research group investigating the non-covalent aggregation of coordination compounds in solution through NMR spectroscopy. First, systems that can undergo only weak non-covalent interactions, such as dispersive and dipole-dipole ones, are considered; successively, coordination compounds that are capable to establish more energetic non-covalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding and/or extended pi-pi stacking interactions, are taken into account. The parallelism between the energy of non-covalent interactions and the level of aggregation is highlighted. The results concerning the latter are mainly obtained through diffusion NMR experiments. In some cases, information about the structure of non-covalent aggregation in solution, obtained through intermolecular NOE studies, is discussed and contrasted with that observed in the solid state (by means of X-ray single crystal investigations, mainly carried out by our group) and/or derived from theoretical calculations. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.