This section involves ten complexes where the imidazole(in)ium-dithiocarboxylate betaines are coordinated to the metal centers as the bidentate bridge ligands form dimers, clusters, or coordination polymers.
4.1. Rhenium
There are only three examples of rhenium complexes bearing azolium-2-thiocarboxylate zwitterionic ligands as a bidentate bridge, which are
35–
37 (
Figure 14) [
16]. In this case, the complexes are dimers where two
cis-tetracarbonyl rhenium fragments are connected via a metal–metal bond and a CS
2− bridge. Each compound crystallizes within a different asymmetric unit. Complex
35 presents a whole molecule in the asymmetric unit, whereas complex
36 has two different half molecules which generate two independent whole molecules (
36 and
36b). On the other hand, complex
37 only shows a half molecule in the asymmetric unit. For this reason, the data referring to structural parameters are modulated according to it.
Table 7 summarizes the distances and angles more significant for complexes
35–
37. In all complexes, the distance Re1-Re1b is around 2.9 Å, which confirms the presence of a single Re–Re bond [
25]. Comparing the distances Re-S for these complexes and the complexes described for rhenium in the section before, there is not a substantial difference around 2.4 Å in both types of complexes. The distances S-C for all complexes are similar to those described before (
Section 3.2) and around to 1.67 Å, and the lengths are closer to the distance for the C=S double bond [
9], indicating that the negative charge of the CS
2− unit is equally spread over the two sulfur atoms. Keeping the attention in the CS
2− motif, the angle S1-C1-S1b is approximately 130° for all complexes, being identical to the free ligands [
10]. Regarding the CN
2+ unit, the distances N-C2 are nearly 1.34 Å, which suggests a certain double bond character [
9] as found in
Section 3.2. For all these complexes (
35–
37), the angle between the planes formed by the CN
2 and CS
2 units are closer to an orthogonal disposition.
4.2. Copper
This is the most populated subsection with five examples: three of them are discrete molecules of two [
26], three [
27], and four [
27] copper centers, and the other two examples are 1-D coordination polymers [
12] (
Figure 15).
Complex
38 [
26] crystallizes showing two unique molecules in the unit cell, with one being a full dimer molecule (
38) and showing only a half of another molecule due to the plane of symmetry (
38b). This means that for the molecule with that symmetry element, there is just one set of bond distances and angles, whereas for the other molecule, there is one set of data for each copper center (two sets in total).
Table 8 shows the most representative structural parameters of both molecules of
38. The structure of this dinuclear copper complex shows two zwitterion ligands and two THF molecules coordinated to each metallic atom. The azolium-2-dithiocarboxilate ligand bonds each sulfur atom to a different copper center (
Figure 16). The distance between the copper atoms in each molecule is in both cases around 2.7 Å, longer than the distances reported in the literature for a Cu
1+-Cu
1+ bond; thus, it cannot be considered formally a single bond Cu-Cu [
28,
29]. The distances S-C of the core CS
2 are around 1.67 Å, which is indicative of a major double bond character [
9], indicating that the negative charge of the CS
2− unit is equally spread over the two sulfur atoms. Additionally, the angle formed in unit CS
2 is approximately 130° for both molecules, which is very similar to that found in the free ligand [
10]. Focusing on the CN
2+ unit, the distances N-C2 are nearly 1.34 Å, making it clear that there is a strong influence of the double bond N=C [
9]. Moreover, the planes formed by the units CS
2 and CN
2 are angled in almost an orthogonal disposition.
In complex
39 [
27], there are three atoms of copper and five zwitterionic ligands, and each copper atom is bounded to four sulfur atoms. On the other hand, sulfur atoms S2 and S7 are bonded to two copper atoms, whereas the rest of them are only connected to one (
Figure 17).
Table 9 shows the most representative structural parameters of
39. The metal atoms draw almost an isosceles triangle with edge values of 2.6608 (13) Å, 2.6221 (11) Å, and 3.1991 (14) Å. In all cases, the distance is too long to be considered as a formal single bond between the copper atoms [
28]. Regarding the S-C bond length, all of them are
c.a. 1.67 Å, indicating the major contribution of a double bond [
9]. The same is observed in the distances C-N of the CN
2 units, being near to 1.34 Å [
9]. The angles within the CS
2 moiety of the betaines show a clear difference between those which have a shared S atom with two Cu atoms and the ones which share the S atoms with only one. Thus, the angles S1-C1-S2 and S7-C7-S8 are smaller than the rest (around 5°). However, all of them match very well with the free ligand (approx. 130°) [
12]. Moreover, the planes formed by the units CS
2 and CN
2 generate an angle between them almost orthogonal.
Complex
40 [
27] shows a core formed by four copper atoms, two chlorine ligands and four zwitterionic ligands; two of them are bridging to two Cu atoms with each S atom, whereas the other two betaine ligands are bonded to two Cu centers by each S atom (
Figure 18). However, the asymmetric unit only contains half of it. Thus, the structural parameters collected in
Table 10 will refer to it. The distance between neighboring copper atoms is 2.5868 (5) Å, and the distance between the copper atoms in the other asymmetric unit is 3.23664 (5) Å. For the two coordination types of the azolium-2-thiocarboxylate zwitterion ligands in this complex, the distances S-C of the core CS
2− are almost identical between them, indicating an equal distribution of the negative charge around both sulfur atoms and fitting better with a majority contribution of a S=C double bond [
9]. For the CN
2+ moieties, the distances of the bonds N-C are around 1.32 Å, which are closer to the double bond N=C [
9]. Contrary to complex
39, in this case the angle of the unit CS
2 is bigger for the ligand with sulfur atoms coordinated to two copper atoms each than the one formed by the ligand which sulfur atoms are only coordinated to one metal atom each (134.07 (17)° vs. 131.99 (15)°). However, these values remain in the free ligand range [
12]. As an additional feature, the angles formed by the planes containing the CS
2 and CN
2 units are more proximal to an orthogonal disposition.
Complexes
41 and
42 are coordination polymers in which single 1-D chains are formed by alternating fragments of CuX (X = Cl (
41), Br (
42)), and the azolinium-2-thiocarboxylate zwitterion ligand (
Figure 19) [
12]. This ligand coordinates via one of its sulfur atoms to a CuX fragment and the other one to the contiguous CuX fragment. In these complexes, Cu atoms adopt a trigonal planar geometry where two of the positions are occupied by two betaines and in the other one is placed the corresponding halide. The bond lengths S1-C1 (1.682 (3) Å for
41 and 1.6802 (15) Å for
42) and S1-C2 (1.678 (3) Å for
41 and 1.6830 (15) Å for
42) are very close to the normal distance for a double bond S=C [
9], which indicates that the negative charge is spread over the two sulfur atoms equally. Regarding the CN
2+ unit of the betaine, the bond lengths N1-C2 (1.317 (4) Å for
41 and 1.3193 (19) Å for
42) and N2-C2 (1.322 (3) Å for
41 and 1.3155 (19) Å for
42) show a major character of a double bond for that motif [
9]. The angles formed by the CS
2 unit in these complexes are 124.18 (18)° and 123.55 (9)° for
41 and
42 respectively, being shorter than the free ligand [
12]. These values are in an intermediate situation to those described in the previous sections, where these angles range from 130° (for the monodentate κ
1-S complexes,
Section 2) to approx. 114° (for the bidentate κ
2-S,S’ complexes,
Section 3). Additionally, for both complexes, the angle formed by the planes of the units CS
2 and CN
2 is 82,12°, describing almost an orthogonal disposition.