Open AccessReactivity of a Gold-Aluminyl Complex with Carbon Dioxide: A Nucleophilic Gold?
Author(s) -
Diego Sorbelli,
Leonardo Belpassi,
Paola Belanzoni
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of the american chemical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 7.115
H-Index - 612
eISSN - 1520-5126
pISSN - 0002-7863
DOI - 10.1021/jacs.1c06728
Subject(s) - chemistry , nucleophile , reactivity (psychology) , electrophile , photochemistry , organic chemistry , catalysis , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
A gold-aluminyl complex has been recently reported to feature an unconventional gold nucleophilic center, which was revealed through reactivity with carbon dioxide leading to the Au-CO 2 coordination mode. In this work, we computationally investigate the reaction mechanism, which is found to be cooperative, with the gold-aluminum bond being the actual nucleophile and Al also behaving as electrophile. The Au-Al bond is shown to be mainly of an electron-sharing nature, with the two metal fragments displaying a diradical-like reactivity with CO 2 .