C-H and O-H bond oxidation by dinuclear Au(II)-OR complexes

Mononuclear Au(II) complexes tend to be unstable; their disproportionation to Au(I) and Au(III) makes it challenging to study their reactivity. To stabilize this uncommon oxidation state of gold (+II), Fackler and Schmidbaur have used bridging ligands to synthesize dinuclear Au(II) complexes that are stabilized by a σ-Au-Au bond.M-OR complexes have been used for decades to activate C-H and ArO-H bonds. There are only a few examples of the use of gold complexes in the oxidation of C-H bonds and ArO-H bonds reported, and even fewer for Au(n)-OR complexes due to the lack of oxophylicity of the metal center. Nevertheless, some examples exist, raising the question of how Au(n)-OR complexes can be designed to activate the weak C(sp3)-H and O-H bond. In this work, we combine the rare oxidation state +II and the metal Au, and we design gold complexes and probe their reactivity towards the oxidation of weak C(sp3)-H and O-H bonds.