Supramolecular interactions within a dual organometallic adduct based upon trimeric perfluoro- ortho -phenylenemercury and ferrocenecarboxaldehyde

With its proximal orientation of Hg(II) atoms, intrinsic accessibility to electrophilic sites on the molecular surface and perfluorinated periphery responsible for its electron-withdrawing nature, trimeric perfluoro-ortho-phenylenemercury, (o-C6F4Hg)3, has demonstrated a capacity to form a wide variety of supramolecular adducts. In these complexes, the Lewis acid (o-C6F4Hg)3 interacts with numerous Lewis bases via supramolecular interactions to stabilize the adduct. Even though various non-covalent interactions between (o-C6F4Hg)3 and a particular substrate can occur, in most cases a single interaction has the greatest influence on the overall crystal structure. In this contribution, we report the synthetic, structural, and luminescence properties of a dual organometallic adduct coupling (o-C6F4Hg)3 with ferrocenecarboxaldehyde (FcCA) [(o-C6F4Hg)3·(FcCA)] 1. Special attention will be given to highlight the various supramolecular interactions within 1 and how these influence crystal packing. The dominating supramolecular interaction within 1 is Hg⋯O contacts between the carbonyl group from FcCA and the three mercury atom core within (o-C6F4Hg)3. The luminescence spectrum of 1 confirmed the non-covalent interaction between the carbonyl oxygen on FcCA and the Lewis acid (o-C6F4Hg)3.