By employing chiral precursors, a new class of chiral gold(I)-sulfido clusters with unique structures has been constructed. Interestingly, pure enantiomers of the precursors are found to self-assemble into chiral hexa- and decanuclear clusters sequentially, while a racemic mixture of them has resulted in heterochiral self-sorting of an achiral meso decanuclear cluster. Chirality has determined not only the symmetry and structures but also the photophysical behaviors of these clusters. The racemic mixture of decanuclear clusters undergoes rearrangement and heterochiral self-sorting to give a meso decanuclear cluster. The thermodynamic-driven heterochiral self-sorting of gold(I) clusters provides a means to develop controlled self-assembly that may be of relevance to the understanding of chirality in nature.
Unprecedented addition reaction-induced gold(I) cluster-to-cluster transformation has been observed in the present work. Reaction of the chlorogold(I) precursor, [vdpp(AuCl)2] (vdpp = vinylidenebis(diphenylphosphine)) containing the diphosphine with unsaturated C═C bond, with H2S resulted in a series of polynuclear gold(I) μ3-sulfido clusters bearing Au(I)···Au(I) interactions; the identities of which have been fully characterized by NMR, electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry, elemental analysis, and single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Diverse research methods, including UV-vis absorption, (1)H NMR, and (31)P NMR spectroscopy, were employed to detect and monitor the transformation and assembly processes. Supported by single crystal structures, the existence of Au(I)···Au(I) bonding interactions sustains the diverse array of sophisticated polynuclear cluster structures and endues them with rich luminescence features.
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