Electrochemistry and spectroelectrochemistry of heterobimetallic porphyrin-corrole dyads. Influence of the spacer, metal ion, and oxidation state on the pyridine binding ability

Combined electrochemical and UV-visible spectroelectrochemical methods were utilized to elucidate the prevailing mechanisms for electroreduction of previously synthesized porphyrin-corrole dyads of the form (PCY)H2Co and (PCY)MClCoCl where M = Fe(III) or Mn(III), PC = porphyrin-corrole, and Y is a bridging group, either biphenylenyl (B), 9,9-dimethylxanthenyl (X), anthracenyl (A), or dibenzofuranyl (O). These studies were carried out in pyridine, conditions under which the cobalt(IV) corrole in (PCY)MClCoCl is immediately reduced to its Co(III) form, thus enabling direct comparisons with the free-base porphyrin dyad, (PCY)H2Co(III) under the same solution conditions. The compounds are all reduced in multiple one-electron-transfer steps, the first of which involves the M(III)/M(II) process of the porphyrin in the case of (PCY)MClCoCl and the Co(III)/Co(II) process of the corrole in the case of (PCY)H2Co. Each metal-centered redox reaction may be accompanied by the gain or loss of pyridine axial ligands, with the exact stoichiometry of the exchange process depending upon the specific combination of metal ions in the dyad, their oxidation states, and the particular spacer in the complex. Before this study was started, it was expected that the porphyrin-corrole dyads with the largest spacers, namely, O and A, would readily accommodate the formation of cobalt(III) bis-pyridine adducts because of the larger size of the cavity while dyads with the smallest B spacer would seem to have insufficient room to add even a single pyridine within the cavity, as was structurally seen in the case of (PCB)H2Co(py). This is clearly not the case, as shown in the present study. A reversible Co(III)/Co(II) reaction is seen for (PCB)MnClCoCl at -0.62 V, which when combined with spectroscopic data, leads to the assignment of (PCB)Mn(III)(py)2Co(III)(py) as the species in pyridine. The reduction of (PCB)Mn(III)(py)2Co(III)(py) to (PCB)Mn(II)(py)Co(III)(py) is accompanied on the slower spectroelectrochemical time scale by the appearance of a 603 nm band in the UV-vis spectra and is consistent with the addition of a second pyridine ligand to the Co(III)(py) unit of the dyad as one ligand is lost from the electrogenerated manganese(II) porphyrin, thus maintaining one pyridine ligand within the cavity. A different change in the coordination number is observed in the case of (PCB)FeClCoCl. Here the initial Fe(III) complex can be assigned as (PCB)Fe(III)ClCo(III)(py), which has no pyridine molecule within the cavity and the singly reduced form is characterized as (PCB)Fe(II)(py)2Co(III)(py)2, which contains two pyridine ligands inside the cavity. A following one-electron reduction of the Fe(II)/Co(III) complex then gives [(PCB)Fe(II)(py)2Co(II)]-.