The syntheses, structures, and catalytic properties for lactones polymerization of eight novel yttrium complexes containing an amine-bis(benzotriazole phenolate) ( C1NN BiBTP) ligand are reported. A series of nitrophenolate (NP)-type of ligands possessing R substituents with variable electronic properties (R = NO 2 , Cl, H, CH 3 ) on ortho and/or para position attached to the phenolate rings have been selected and further reacted with
C1NNBiBTP-H 2 proligand and YCl 3 Á6H 2 O. Two series of complexes, (8) with two NP derivatives, were synthesized. Their ring-opening polymerizations of L-lactide (L-LA) were investigated for all complexes in order to further understand the correlations between the inductive effect of substitutions and catalytic properties. Particularly, the activity and controllability of yttrium complexes 3 and 5 were improved dramatically comparing with the literature complex with the similar coordination environment, [Y( C1NN BiBTP) (NO 3 )(MeOH) 2 ], which can be a successful example to enhance the catalytic properties by exchanging coordinate molecules.Well-defined metal complexes, 29-32 such as Mg, Zn, Ti, and Zr 33 incorporated by amine bridged-(benzotriazole phenolate) ligands attract increasing attention because of the successful catalytic systems of amine-bis(phenolate) rare-earth metal complexes in the stereoselective ROP of rac-ε-butyrolactone (rac-ε-BL) and rac-lactide (rac-LA). 23,24,[26][27][28] Rare-earth metal catalysts, such as yttrium, ytterbium, and erbium, 34-36 with the amine-phenolate ligands 25,37 and diamine-bis(phenolate) ligands 38 have also been synthesized which shown to be a high active initiator with great stereocontrol for producing highly heterotactic PLAs and heteroselective polymerization of rac-LA, respectively. Enlightened by excellent catalysis results of such rare earth complexes, we are interested in extending the classic amine bridged-bis(phenolate) ligands to a new type of multidentate amine-bis(phenolate) derivatives containing the nitrogen-heterocyclic donors, benzotriazole groups. 37 The air-stable catalysts that efficiently polymerized lactide under solvent-free polymerization have been synthesized, but the activity and the controllability were not as good as other airsensitive catalysts. For this reason, we would like to improve the catalytic properties by modifying ligands.Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article.