Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.141, No.33, 12957-12961, 2019
Homoleptic Platinum/Silver Superatoms Protected by Dithiolates: Linear Assemblies of Two and Three Centered Icosahedra Isolobal to Ne-2 and I-3(-)
Three bimetallic platinum/silver nano clusters, PtAg20(dtp)(12) (1), Pt2Ag33(dtp)(17) (2), and Pt3Ag44(dtp)(22) (3) (dtp: dipropyl dithiophosphate), with cluster electron counts of 8, 16, and 22, respectively, were produced via a one-phase coreduction method. Single-crystal X-ray structures reveal that their inner cores can be visualized as consisting of one, two, and three centered icosahedral Pt@Ag-12 units, respectively. In 2 and 3, these units are vertex-sharing and are assembled linearly. Intriguingly, the 22-electron alloy (3) is isolobal to the linear triiodide anion, I-3(-), and represents the first example of a cluster made of three superatoms whose bonding characteristics are similar to those of a triatomic molecular species.