X-ray Powder Diffraction Study of Organometallic Polymers: [Ru(L)(CO)2]n (L = 2,2‘-Bipyridine or 1,10-Phenanthroline)

A combination of rather unconventional XRPD methods has been used to assess the polymeric nature of the [Ru(L)(CO) 2 ] n (L = 2,2‘-bipyridine, 4,4‘-dimethyl-2,2‘-bipyridine, and 1,10-phenanthroline) derivatives. The polymeric chains pack pseudohexagonally in the ab plane and grow along c with Ru−Ru distances close to 3.0 Å. The very poor diffraction patterns of these electrogenerated polymers suggest that the flat Ru(L)(CO) 2 monomers are staggered by 45° or 135° rotations (as in [Ru(CO) 4 ] n ) but stack in random sequence along the chains.