Ruthenium‐assisted tellurium abstraction in bis(thiophen‐2‐yl) ditelluride

Abstract

The reaction of [RuCl2(CO)3]2 and Te2Tpn2 (Tpn = thiophen-2-yl, C4H3S) in the absence of light resulted in the formation of cct-[RuCl2(CO)2(TeTpn2)2] (1) [cis(Cl)-cis(CO)-trans(TeTpn2)] and TeTpn2 (2) together with the precipitation of tellurium. The complex 1 and the monotelluride 2 were characterized by NMR spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The decomposition of Te2Tpn2 to TeTpn2 has been monitored by 125Te NMR spectroscopy and seemed to be faster than the ligand substitution in [RuCl2(CO)3]2 by TeTpn2. A catalytic cycle is proposed for the decomposition of Te2Tpn2 to TeTpn2 based on the PBE0-D3/def2-TZVP calculations.