Varying the flexibility of the aromatic backbone in half sandwich rhodium(III) dithiolato complexes: a synthetic, spectroscopic and structural investigation

A series of rhodium(III) half sandwich complexes of the type [Cp*Rh(PMe₃)(S—R—S)]; S—R—S = naphthalene-1,8-dithiolate, acenaphthene-5,6-dithiolate, [1,1′-biphenyl]-2,2′-dithiolate and [2,2′-binaphthalene]-1,1′-dithiolate are reported. In the case of [2,2′-binaphthalene]-1,1′-dithiolate this represents an infrequent example of a metal complex containing this ligand. All the complexes have been fully characterised using multinuclear NMR spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The single crystal X-ray structure of the starting material [Cp*Rh(PMe₃)Br₂] (1) is also reported for the first time.