William Henderson, Lip L. Koh, John D. Ranford, Ward T. Robinson, Jan O. Svensson, Jagadese J. Vittal, Yu M. Wang and Yan Xu
The tridentate metal binding domains of iron chelating agents have been tethered via a variable length methylene (CH2)n linker (n = 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14). The single-crystal X-ray structures of monomeric ([Fe(HL8)]·2.5H2O n = 8; H4L8 is 1,10-decanedioyl di(salicylaldehyde hydrazone)) and dimeric ([{Fe(H2PL4)}2]Cl2·2H2O n = 4; H4PL4 is 1,6-hexanedioyl di(pyridoxal hydrazone)) iron(III) complexes have been determined. The complexes exhibit oligomerism: with chain lengths of n ≥ 6 monomers are prevalent whereas for shorter chains this is not possible and a series of clusters exist as shown by ESMS and molecular modelling.