“…[19,20] Although they are multifunctional ligands, with several potential coordination sites, such as P, N and O, [20][21][22][23] they tend to coordinate through the soft donor P atom. Therefore, their coordination to noble metals with soft acidic character, such as Ru, Re, Rh, Pt, Pd, Ag and Au, have been intensively studied, [19,20] while, their coordination to the abundant low-cost first row transition metals is limited to soft low oxidation state metal ions such as Cu-(I), [20,[24][25][26][27] Mn(I), [28] Ni(0) and Cr(0). [29] Recently, we developed a novel strategy to address this challenge by obtaining PTA derivatives via N-alkylation, which contain hard donor coordination sites (e. g. carboxylate group).…”