The selective activation of strong C-H bond is of great importance in chemistry. For electron-rich late transition metals, oxidative addition is the typical pathway to activate the C-H bond, where the agostic interaction has been considered as the intermediate or transition state5. This work are interested in the reactivity of the pincer Iron complexes due to the obvious economic and environmental considerations. We discovered that Fe2(CO)9 are capable to activate the aromatic C-H bond under UV irradiation to yield pincer Iron(II) hydride complex, which upon 1 e- oxidation would generate a very rare pincer Iron(I) complex containing an arene C-H agostic bond. The resulting agostic interaction is rather acidic, and can be protonated in the presence of non-redox active base to give pincer Iron(I) dicarbonyl complex.

Agostic C(sp2)-H Iron(I) pincer complex

254th National Meeting (2017)

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