Facial Tridentate Ligands for Stabilizing Palladium(IV) Complexes

This paper describes the synthesis of a series of PdIV complexes containing modular monoanionic tridentate facially coordinated NNN and NNC donor ligands. In all cases, these complexes are stable to reductive elimination for a minimum of several days in solution at room temperature. With appropriately designed tridentate ligands, the PdIV adducts participate in both ligand substitution and C–H activation reactions. Overall, this work shows that unsymmetrical fac-L2X type ligands can serve as versatile and tunable scaffolds for modulating the reactivity of octahedral PdIV complexes.