Ring opening and bidentate coordination of amidinate germylenes and silylenes on carbonyl dicobalt complexes: the importance of a slight difference in ligand volume

The reactions of [Co2 (CO)8 ] with one equiv of the benzamidinate (R2 bzam) group-14 tetrylenes [M(R2 bzam)(HMDS)] (HMDS=N(SiMe3 )2 ; 1: M=Ge, R=iPr; 2: M=Si, R=tBu; 3: M=Ge, R=tBu) at 20 °C led to the monosubstituted complexes [Co2 {κ(1) MM(R2 bzam)(HMDS)}(CO)7 ] (4: M=Ge, R=iPr; 5: M=Si, R=tBu; 6: M=Ge, R=tBu), which contain a terminal κ(1) M-tetrylene ligand. Whereas the Co2 Si and Co2 Ge tert-butyl derivatives 5 and 6 are stable at 20 °C, the Co2 Ge isopropyl derivative 4 evolved to the ligand-bridged derivative [Co2 {μ-κ(2) Ge,N-Ge(iPr2 bzam)(HMDS)}(μ-CO)(CO)5 ] (7), in which the Ge atom spans the CoCo bond and one arm of the amidinate fragment is attached to a Co atom. The mechanism of this reaction has been modeled with the help of DFT calculations, which have also demonstrated that the transformation of amidinate-tetrylene ligands on the dicobalt framework is negligibly influenced by the nature of the group-14 metal atom (Si or Ge) but is strongly dependent upon the volume of the amidinate NR groups. The disubstituted derivatives [Co2 {κ(1) MM(R2 bzam)(HMDS)}2 (CO)6 ] (8: M=Ge, R=iPr; 9: M=Si, R=tBu; 10: M=Ge, R=tBu), which contain two terminal κ(1) M-tetrylene ligands, have been prepared by treating [Co2 (CO)8 ] with two equiv of 1-3 at 20 °C. The IR spectra of 8-10 have shown that the basicity of germylenes 1 and 3 is very high (comparable to that of trialkylphosphanes and 1,3-diarylimidazol-2-ylidenes), whereas that of silylene 2 is even higher.