Despite the abundance of "sandwich" complexes, in which two cyclic aromatic hydrocarbon ligands flank a metal center, this motif has not been extended to sheets of multiple metal atoms. We prepared and isolated two such compounds. In the first, three palladium centers form a planar triangular array, capped by chlorides, between two cycloheptatrienyl ligands. In the second, a pentapalladium sheet adopts an edge-sharing triangle-trapezoid skeleton between two naphthacene rings. The compounds were characterized by x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The nature of bonding in the clusters was analyzed by quantum calculations.

A surprisingly stable homoleptic Pd(0)(4) chain complex of non-activated olefins was isolated and structurally characterized by X-ray crystallographic analysis, and the unique structure and bonding are compared to those of the corresponding dicationic [Pd(4)](2+) chain sandwich complex.