Scorpionate Ligands and Surroundings. Coordination Properties - Solution Studies

New metal-scorpionate complexes were synthesized and characterized in the solid state and in solution. We focused our attention especially on Cu(I) complexes with N/S-donor scorpionates, aiming at verifying if these ligands impose the coordination geometry on metal centers, or the electronic and steric requirements of the latter dominate the coordination, instead. Initially, we studied dinuclear Cu(I) complexes with anionic tripodal B-centered S3 and S2N2 donor ligands and investigated their reactivity with monodentate co-ligands (Chapter 2). Analyzing the drawbacks of these systems (scarce tunability of the scorpionate arms and possible coordination of the borohydride to the metal) we pointed our attention towards neutral C-centered scorpionates. A new class of tripods based on a pyridine-pyrazole moiety was developed, the first of which is the N,N',O-donor LOH (Chapter 3), whose coordination capabilities were tested with late transition metal ions (Ni2+, Cu2+, Zn2+). N/S-donor ligands of the same typology, namely N,N',S,S'-scorpionates (Chapters 5 and Section 6.1) and a N,N',S precursors (Chapter 4), were prepared and coordinated to Cu(I). Finally, we tested the binding capabilities of new N2S,S'-donor bis(pyrazol-1-yl)methane derivatives with Cu(I) (Section 6.2).