Photoreductive Elimination of Chlorine from Antimony in an [SbPd]VII Complex.

As part of our ongoing interest in main group species that support the photoreductive elimination of halogens, we have synthesized [Cl3SbVPdIICl2(o-dppp)2] (o-dppp = o-(Ph2P)C6H4), a palladium dichloride complex featuring a Lewis acidic trichlorostiborane moiety positioned within the ligand architecture. Upon UV irradiation, this complex undergoes a clean photoreductive chlorine elimination reaction which produces [Cl2SbIVPdICl(o-dppp)2], a complex with a covalent Sb-Pd bond. This transformation illustrates the viability of antimony as an element from which a halogen can be photoeliminated; it also shows that a metal halide can be photolytically coupled with a main group halide to generate a metal-element bond.