Halogen bonding or close packing? Examining the structural landscape in a series of Cu(II)-acac complexes

A series of four bifunctional ligands based on β-diketonate moieties bearing methyl (2), chloro (3), bromo (4) and iodo (5) substituents and their corresponding Cu(II) complexes have been synthesized and crystallographically characterized in order to explore the possibility of using halogen bonds for the directed assembly of predictable architectures in coordination chemistry. The four ligands have characteristic O-H···O intramolecular hydrogen bonds and the structure of ligand 2 is close packed whereas, ligands 3, 4 and 5 contain extended 1-D architectures based on C=O···X halogen bonds. In each case, the halogen-bond donor seeks out the most powerful halogen-bond acceptor (based on electrostatic considerations). In the corresponding Cu(II) complexes the coordination chemistry remains a constant throughout the series, the four-coordinate metal ion sits in a slightly distorted square-planar arrangement, and there are no unexpected appearances of coordinated or non-coordinated solvent molecules. Furthermore, the most powerful halogen-bond acceptors have been almost depleted of charge as a result of metal chelation and none of the potential halogen-bond interactions are capable of competing with the head-to-head close packing that is observed in the methyl, chloro, and bromo, substituted Cu(II) complexes. The enhanced polarizability of the iodine atom, produces a more electropositive surface which means that this structure cannot accommodate a linear head-to-head arrangement due to electrostatic repulsion, and thus [Cu(5)(2)] adopts a unique close-packed structure very different from the other three iso-structural complexes, [Cu(2)(2)]-[Cu(4)(2)].