The fascinating implications of new results in gold chemistry

Abstract

Chemists today are increasingly fascinated by gold's unique position in the family of elements. In this review, the author looks at important new results emerging from recent research in gold chemistry.

Is gold always chemically passive?

“…Therefore, gold is able to react with the amines, as all the metals presented in this study, even if it is commonly known to be chemically inert since it is not covered by its oxidized form [1]. Indeed, gold corrosion was previously studied [32]; we have to remember that gold has a redox potential ðE Au=Au 3þ ¼ 1:5 VÞ and as a consequence can react with other chemical species [2][3][4][5]26,33,34].…”

“…On one hand, gold is well known to be chemically inert [1,2], and often used as a reference substrate since it supposedly never reacts with any coating. On the other hand, some chemists hardly study gold reactions, especially the gold self-assembled monolayer (SAM), and the gold-organic molecule junction using scanning tunnelling microscopy [3][4][5][6].…”

Structural and Photophysical Properties of (Phosphane)gold(I)‐Decorated 4,4′‐Diethynyl‐2,2′‐bipyridine Ligands

“…8 The 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra of the compounds were in accord with the symmetrical structure shown in Chart 1. However, it was not possible to resolve signals in any of the 13 C NMR spectra for the alkyne carbon atoms. The 31 P NMR spectrum of each compound exhibited one signal, shifted from that of the corresponding R 3 PAuCl.…”

“…[3,[9][10][11] By combining phosphine and alkyne metal-binding domains at a gold(I) centre, one gains significant scope for the design of macromolecules: [12] rigid-rod P-Au-C≡C-domains and a wide range of readily accessible mono-, bi-and polydentate phosphine ligands containing sp 3 hybridized P atoms combine with a tendency for gold atoms to aggregate (so-called 'aurophilicity'). [13][14][15]16] Of the 215 compounds in the CSD (CSD v 5.3 with May 2009 updates, Conquest v. 1.11) [17] possessing R 3 PAuC≡C units, only 19 [9,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] exhibit intermolecular aurophilic interactions resulting in onedimensional Au...Au bonded polymers. Of particular relevance to our work is the trigold derivative ( n Bu 3 PAuC≡CCH 2 OCH 2 ) 3 CCH 2 Otpy (tpy = 2,2';6',2"-terpyridine) which forms one-dimensional chains with an oriented assembly in the solid state in which all the tpy units point in the same direction.…”

Bis(3,3'-dimethylene-2,2'-biquinolinium)tetrabromoaurate(III) dibromoaurate (I)

“…For some time, gold chemistry has received great attention, mainly because of the specific properties and structure of its compounds (Schmidbaur, 1990). It is known that the reaction of Aum with bidentate nitrogen-containing ligands produced either tetra-or pentacoordinated auriferous complexes of Au III having distorted squareplanar, tetrahedral, square-pyramidal or bipyramidal coordination (O'Connor & Sirra, 1978;Robinson & Sinn, 1975;Chalton, Harris, Petit & Stephenson, 1966).…”