Nitrogen Donor Ligands in the Coordination Chemistry of the Rare Earth and Alkaline Earth Metals

Bis(phosphinimino)methanide rare earth metal bisborohydrides, as illustrated in Scheme I, were successfully synthesized by salt metathesis reactions of [K{CH(PPh2NSiMe3)2}] with [Ln(BH4)3(THF)n] (Ln = Sc (n = 2); Ln = La, Nd, Lu (n = 3)) or in the case of yttrium by the reaction of [{(Me3SiNPPh2)2CH}YCl2]2 with NaBH4. Interestingly, the BH4- anions are ?3-coordinated in the solid state structures of 3, 4, 6 and 7, while for the scandium complex 5 two different conformational polymorphs were identified, in which either both BH4- groups are ?3-coordinated or one BH4- anion shows an ?2-coordination mode. Furthermore, complexes 3, 6 and 7 showed high activities in the ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of e-caprolactone (CL). At 0 °C, the molar mass distribution reached the narrowest values ever obtained for the ROP of CL initiated by a rare earth metal borohydride species.