An Investigation of the Formation Mechanism of Copper(II) Carbodiimide

Richard Dronskowski (1) , Xiaohui Liu (1)

1 IAC RWTH - Institute of Inorganic Chemistry [Aachen]

The formation mechanism of copper(II) carbodiimide in aqueous ammonia solution has been studied by synthetic and crystallographic means. The reduction of the starting Cu(II) solution leads to the synthesis of solid Cu(I) intermediates, and the crystal structures of the two new compounds Cu(NCNH2)Cl (a = 8.2925(4), b = 3.7275(1), c = 12.4534(4) Å, Pnma) and the iso-structural Cu(NCNH2)Br (a = 8.406(3), b = 3.9229(9), c = 12.656(3) Å, Pnma) have been elucidated. A further increase in pH value by adding more ammonia leads to the crystallization of two additional Cu(I) intermediates, Cu2NCN and the ammine adduct Cu4(NCN)2NH3. The former can be also made by the thermal decomposition of the latter whereas mild oxida-tion of Cu4(NCN)2NH3 leads to the formation of perfectly crystalline CuNCN.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Richard Dronskowski, Xiaohui Liu. An Investigation of the Formation Mechanism of Copper(II) Carbodiimide. Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry / Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie, 2009, 636 (1), pp.121. ⟨10.1002/zaac.200900320⟩. ⟨hal-00528952⟩