Phosphine/sulfoxide-carbone, a ligand with a flexible bonding mode for early to late transition metals

In recent years, carbones have emerged as a new exciting class of carbon-based ligands. We report here a series of organometallic complexes demonstrating the versatility in coordination mode of phosphine/sulfoxide carbone 1. Indeed, 1 is able to chelate both early and late transition metals, in a mono- or bidentate fashion depending on the oxyphilic character of metal center thanks to the presence of the sulfoxide moiety. All complexes have been fully characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis and by NMR spectroscopy (except hafnium complex because of its extreme insolubility). It is noteworthy that silver(I) and zirconium(IV) complexes are efficient transmetalating reagents toward copper(I) complexes.