New Chiral Zinc Complexes: Synthesis, Structure, and Induction of Axial Chirality

We describe an efficient methodology for the preparation of new chiral zinc complexes by assembling dynamically racemic biphenol derivatives and chiral 1,2-diamines with suitable zinc­(II) precursors. Mononuclear and dinuclear zinc­(II) complexes were formed from differently substituted biphenols. The solid-state and solution structural characterization of the resulting compounds allowed us to demonstrate a preferential sense of induced axial chirality for mononuclear complexes, a phenomenon that was not observed for the dinuclear ones.