Tetravalent Terbium Chelates: Stability Enhancement and Property Tuning

Coordination chemistry of rare-earth elements has been dominated by the +3 oxidation state. Complexes with higher-valence lanthanide ions are synthetically challenging but are of fundamental research interest and significance as advanced molecular materials. Herein, four tetravalent terbium complexes (-) of the common formula [Tb(OSiPh)L] (L = ethylene glycol dimethyl ether (DME), 2,2-bipyridine (bpy), 2,2-bipyrimidine (bpym), and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen)) are reported. Crystallographic analyses reveal in each of these complexes a hexacoordinate Tb(IV) ion situated in a distorted octahedral coordination environment formed by four triphenylsiloxido ligands and a bidentate chelating ligand. The use of chelating ligands enhances the stability of the resulting complexes over their THF solvate precursor. More significantly, the aromatic N-chelating ligands have been found to tune effectively the electronic structures of the complexes, as evidenced by the sizable potential shifts observed for the quasi-reversible redox Tb(IV/III) process and by the changes in their absorption spectra. The experimental findings are augmented with quantum theoretical calculations in which the ligand π-donation to the 5 orbitals of the Tb(IV) center is found to be primarily responsible for stability enhancement and the corresponding changes of physical properties observed. Magnetic measurements and results from electron paramagnetic resonance studies produced small absolute values of zero-field splittings of these complexes, ranging from 0.1071(22) to 1.1484(112) cm and comparable to the values reported for analogous Tb(IV) complexes.