A Homoleptic Copper(I) Acetylene Complex

ABSTRACT We report the synthesis and characterization of the Cu(I) complex [Cu(C 2 H 2 ) 3 ][Al(OR F ) 4 ] ( 1 ), which represents a very rare example of a homoleptic acetylene complex. 1 was synthesized from the dinitrogen complex [(N 2 )Cu{Al(OR F ) 4 }] by simple ligand substitution. While the crystallographic description of 1 is complicated by an incommensurate modulated structure, the molecular connectivity could be unambiguously determined, and the identity of 1 was further confirmed by NMR and Raman spectroscopy as well as extensive quantum chemical calculations.