The crystal and molecular structure of pentafluoropropionylbenzoylmethylene triphenylphosphorane

The crystals of pentafluoropropionylbenzoylmethylene triphenylphosphorane that bears two strongly electron-withdrawing groups in alkylidene moiety are monoclinic and its space group is C2/c, with a = 11.271(3)Å, b = 18.253(6)Å, c =23.938(7)Å, β = 91.09(2)°, z = 8. The X-ray diffraction intensity data were collected on a four-circle diffractometer. The structure has been solved by direct method and refined by block-diagonal least-squares method. The final R- index was 0.075 for 3146 independent observed reflexions. In this paper the structure of this ylide is compared with that of corresponding arsonium ylide previously reported. Both ylidic skeleton structures are planar with sp² hybridization. The bond length of P-C(1) is 1.748 (5)Å with bond order. 1.60 while the bond order of As-C(1) in the corresponding arsonium ylide is 1.46, indicating that the phosphonium ylide has a greater contribution of “ylene” structure to the overall structure. As a result the phosphonium ylide should be less reactive than the corresponding arsonium ylide. In both ylides, (he major delocalized canonical forms of negative charge are shown to be 3.