Publication
Thorium redox chemistry is extremely scarce due to the high stability of ThIV. Here we report two unique examples of thorium arenide complexes prepared by reduction of a ThIV-siloxide complex in presence of naphthalene, the mononuclear arenide complex [K(OSi(OtBu)3)3Th(η6-C10H8)] (1) and the inverse-sandwich complex [K(OSi(OtBu)3)3Th]2(μ-η6,η6-C10H8)] (2). The electrons stored in these complexes allow the reduction of a broad range of substrates (N2O, AdN3, CO2, HBBN). Higher reactivity was found for the complex 1 which reacts with the diazoolefin IDipp=CN2 to yield the unexpected ThIV amidoalkynyl complex 5 via a terminal N-heterocyclic vinylidene intermediate. This work showed that arenides can act as convenient redox-active ligands for implementing thorium-ligand cooperative multielectron transfer and that the reactivity can be tuned by the arenide binding mode.