The solid-state structural analysis of the title compound [systematic name: 5,11disulfanylidene-4,6,10,12-tetrakis(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)-4,6,10,12-tetraazatricyclo[7.3.0.0 3,7 ]dodeca-1(9),3(7)-diene-2,8-dione], C 44 H 44 N 4 O 2 S 2[+solvent], reveals that the molecule crystallizes in a highly symmetric cubic space group so that one quarter of the molecule is crystallographically unique, the molecule lying on special positions (two mirror planes, two twofold axes and a center of inversion). The crystal structure exhibits large cavities of 193 Å 3 accounting for 7.3% of the total unit-cell volume. These cavities contain residual density peaks but it was not possible to unambiguously identify the solvent therein. The contribution of the disordered solvent molecules to the scattering was removed using a solvent mask and is not included in the reported molecular weight. No classical hydrogen bonds are observed between the main molecules.
Structure descriptionA variety of substituted imidazole-2-thiones have been synthesized and used as precursors for the generation of free N-heterocyclic carbenes (Kuhn & Kratz, 1993). Other uses for these types of molecules include the stabilization of gold nanoparticles (Moraes et al., 2017;Okamoto et al., 2006) and as ligands for metal coordination studies (Parveen et al., 2019). As part of our ongoing effort with bis(N-heterocyclic carbene) and its transitionmetal complexes (Tennyson et al., 2010), the title compound (1,1 0 ,3,3 0 -tetramesitylquinobis(imidazole)-2,2 0 -dithione) was synthesized and its single-crystal X-ray analysis is reported here.The molecular structure of the title compound is presented in Fig. 1. The molecules crystallize in a rare cubic space group (Im3) with Z = 6 and lie on special positions (two mirror planes, two twofold axes and a center of inversion). A search in the Cambridge Structural Database revealed that only 0.3% of the crystals were reported to crystallize in