Structural characterization and Hirshfeld surface analysis of a Co^II complex with imidazo[1,2-a]pyridine

A new mononuclear tetra-hedral Co^II complex, di-chlorido-bis-(imidazo[1,2-a]pyridine-κN¹)cobalt(II), [CoCl₂(C₇H₆N₂)₂], has been synthesized using a bioactive imidazo-pyridine ligand. X-ray crystallography reveals that the solid-state structure of the title complex exhibits both C-H⋯Cl and π-π stacking inter-actions in building supra-molecular assemblies. Indeed, the mol-ecules are linked by C-H⋯Cl inter-actions into a two-dimensional framework, with finite zero-dimensional dimeric units as building blocks, whereas π-π stacking plays a crucial role in building a supra-molecular layered network. An exhaustive investigation of the diverse inter-molecular inter-actions via Hirshfeld surface analysis enables contributions to the crystal packing of the title complex to be qu-anti-fied. The fingerprint plots associated with the Hirshfeld surface clearly display each significant inter-action involved in the structure, by qu-anti-fying them in an effective visual manner.