Stable and Highly Persistent Quinoxaline-Centered Metalloorganic Radical Anions: Preparation, Structural, Spectroscopic, and Computational Investigations

Coordination of diazines such as quinoxaline to transition metals stabilizes radical anions generated by chemical or electrochemical cathodic reduction. However, even though various sorts of radical anionic diazines have been subjected to spectroscopic investigations in the recent past, reports combining structural, solid-state electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and computational investigations of kinetically stable species are still missing. In this study, four radical anions derived from tricarbonylmanganese- and tricarbonylrhenium-bound quinoxaline chelates, embedded within a triple-decker architecture, have been prepared from neutral substrates by chemical reduction over alkaline metals (K, Rb); the electronic structure of the latter metalloorganic paramagnetic salts was investigated by the means of structural X-ray diffraction analysis, electrochemistry, solution and crystal EPR spectroscopy, and density functional theory (DFT). Unprecedented structures of three manganese-bound and one rhenium-bound quinoxaline-derived paramagnetic salts were obtained from solutions of the corresponding radical anions crystallized in the presence of cryptand 222. It is inferred from a comparative study of the structures of anionic and neutral quinoxaline complexes that reduction does not have any significant impact over the coordination mode of the metal centers and over the overall geometry of the triple-decker architecture. The most notable changes in the radical-anionic metalloorganic species, as compared to the neutral parent molecules, comprise a slight hapticity shift of the metal-bound benzyl moiety and a weak intraannular distortion of the quinoxalyl core. Single-crystal EPR experiments carried out with the rhenium and manganese compounds produced the respective anisotropic g tensor, which was found in each case to be essentially located at the quinoxalyl fragment. Computations, carded out using DFT methods (B3LYP-LANL2DZ and Becke-Perdew-TZP), corroborated the features suggested by structural analysis. Single-point calculation using the B3LYP functional and various basis sets (LANL2DZ, 6-31G(d), 6-311+G(d), and 6-311+G(2d,p)] provided us with values of anisotropic g tensors and hyperfine coupling constants consistent with those determined experimentally. It is inferred from this study that the two metal centers bound to the nitrogen atoms of the quinoxalyl core contribute in the lowering of the HOMO-LUMO gap in the neutral species. The triple-decker arrangement, which combines chelation of the metal, steric protection, and encapsulation of the central quinoxalyl core, is a stabilizing factor that provides a long-lived character to the radical-anionic species.