Structural Characterization of Heterometallic Gold – Iron Clusters

Structural survey of the clusters in Cambridge Structural Database was carried out to investigate the stereochemistry about gold and iron in their heterometallic clusters. Clusters ranging from heterobinuclear to polynuclear clusters were included in the survey. The gold atoms are surrounded from two to six donor atoms, and the iron atoms from six to ten donor atoms. The shortest Au-Fe, Fe-Fe and Au-Au bond distances are 2.438(3), 2.504(3) and 2.630(1)Å. There are few clusters, which contain two crystallographically independent molecules and another one which contains four such molecules. Those are classical examples of distortion isomerism. Correlations between structural parameters and donor atoms are given.