Approaches to Designing Ligands in Pursuit of Biologically Relevant Multimetallic Models

Mary Eaton

Gainesville, Florida

A wide interest persists in the synthesis of multimetallic compounds as models for active sites in proteins and on heterogeneous surfaces. Approaches to designing these types of clusters in a rational manner are typically plagued by undesired agglomeration or coordination environments that deviate from that intended in the ligand design. Multiple strategies have been explored to circumvent these issues resulting in the development of novel ligands for the purpose of investigating the salient properties of iron molybdenum cofactor and dinitrogen reduction. The synthetic approaches surveyed are discussed, as well as the resulting multimetallic complexes derived from these ligands. These advancements have produced modifications to our previously reported tri-metallating tris(β‐diketiminate) cyclophanate ligand as well as additional ligands capable of greater nuclearity.