Structural characterization of silver dialkylphosphite salts using solid‐state 109Ag and 31P NMR spectroscopy,IR spectroscopy and DFT calculations

High‐resolution solid‐state ¹⁰⁹Ag and ³¹P NMR spectroscopy was used to investigate a series of silver dialkylphosphite salts, Ag(O)P(OR)₂ (R = CH₃, C₂H₅, C₄H₉ and C₈H₁₇), and determine whether they adopt keto, enol or dimer structures in the solid state. The silver chemical shift, CS, tensors and |J(¹⁰⁹Ag, ³¹P)| values for these salts were determined using ¹⁰⁹Ag (Ξ = 4.652%) NMR spectroscopy. The magnitudes of J(¹⁰⁹Ag, ³¹P) range from 1250 ± 10 to 1318 ± 10 Hz and are the largest reported so far. These values indicate that phosphorus is directly bonded to silver for all these salts and thus exclude the enol structure. All ³¹P NMR spectra exhibit splittings due to indirect spin–spin coupling to ¹⁰⁷Ag (I = 1/2, NA = 51.8%) and ¹⁰⁹Ag (I = 1/2, NA = 48.2%). The ¹J(¹⁰⁹Ag, ³¹P) values measured by both ¹⁰⁹Ag and ³¹P NMR spectroscopy agree within experimental error. Analysis of ³¹P NMR spectra of stationary samples for these salts allowed the determination of the phosphorus CS tensors. The absence of characteristic P?O stretching absorption bands near 1250 cm^?1 in the IR spectra for these salts exclude the simple keto tautomer. Thus, the combination of solid‐state NMR and IR results indicate that these silver dialkylphosphite salts probably have a dimer structure. Values of silver and phosphorus CS tensors as well as ¹J(¹⁰⁹Ag, ³¹P) values for a dimer model calculated using the density functional theory (DFT) method are in agreement with the experimental observations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.