Quite a num ber of chalcogen-containing iron car bonyl clus ters have been syn the sized and struc tur ally char ac ter ized, and the in ter est ing struc tural trans for ma tions and re ac tiv i ties of these clus ters have been system at i cally in ves ti gated as well. In this short re view, we would like to de scribe the re cent de vel op ments on iron car bonyl in cor po rated chalcogen atom (E = Te, Se, S) clus ters in our lab o ra tory and will fo cus on the system atic syn the sis, re ac tiv ity, and clus ter growth in this ex cit ing sys tem.
IN TRO DUC TIONHieber et al. re ported the gen eral syn the sis of main group-iron car bonyl com plexes around the 1950s, 1 in which a wide range of main group ox ides are used to re act with Fe(CO) 5 /KOH in meth a nol so lu tions. The chem is try of main group-transition metal clus ters has grown steadily ever since. Since 1980, the work in this area has been ex ten sively expanded and a large amount of novel bond ing ver sa til ity and re ac tiv ity of the re sul tant clus ters have been re vealed and discussed. 2,3 This re port will mainly em pha size the re cent de velop ments of chalcogen-containing iron car bonyl clus ters in our lab o ra tory, deal ing spe cially with the syn the sis, chem i cal re ac tiv ity com par i son, and clus ter growth pro cesses from smaller clus ters to larger-sized clus ters. As we know, many metal car bonyl clus ters tend to frag ment when ap plied in cat a lytic re ac tions. Com pounds con tain ing bonds be tween tran si tion metal and group 16 ele ments (S, Se, Te) have been stud ied be cause of the po tential use ful ness of these main group el e ments as bridges between dif fer ent metal at oms in clus ters and as sta bi liz ing lig ands to pre vent their frag men ta tion. In con trast to the larger num ber of sul fur con tain ing clus ters, those con taining se le nium and tel lu rium have been much less ex plored. Due to the rel a tively larger ra dius and Lewis acid ity of se lenium and tel lu rium, cer tain ge om e try and re ac tiv ity dif ferences have been sug gested for the re sul tant clus ters. Nev erthe less, re cent stud ies in di cate that elec tronic and steric factors of the lig ands may as well play a cou pling ef fect on the for ma tion of the chalcogen iron car bonyl clus ters, and most of the re sul tant clus ters, seem not reg u larly to fol low the sim ple chem i cal trend. Hence, more work has to be done to at tempt to an swer this so phis ti cated ques tion. We will describe in this re view the chalcogen-containing iron clus ters ba si cally in terms of the ef fects of main group el e ments and the in com ing groups.
TEL LU RIUM-CONTAINING IRON CLUS TERS
Hieber's Syn the sisIn the 1950s, Hieber et al. re ported that TeO3 2-could react with the ba sic iron car bonyl so lu tions fol lowed by acid i fica tion to af ford Te 2 Fe 2 (CO) 6 (1) 4 and Te 2 Fe 3 (CO) 9 (2).
1c,5Ever since, the re ac tiv ity of 1 and 2 has been ex ten sively stud ied, and they have proved to be very use ful in many cluster build ...