The Solvent Effect on Composition and Dimensionality of Mercury(II) Complexes with Picolinic Acid

Three new mercury(II) coordination compounds, {[HgCl(pic)]}_n (1), [HgCl(pic)(picH)] (2), and [HgBr(pic)(picH)] (3) (picH = pyridine-2-carboxylic acid, picolinic acid) were prepared by reactions of the corresponding mercury(II) halides and picolinic acid in an aqueous (1) or alcohol–methanol or ethanol (2 and 3) solutions. Two different types of coordination compounds were obtained depending on the solvent used. The crystal structures were determined by the single-crystal X-ray structural analysis. Compound 1 is a one-dimensional (1-D) coordination polymer with mercury(II) ions bridged by chelating and bridging N,O,O′-picolinate ions. Each mercury(II) ion is four-coordinated with a bidentate picolinate ion, a carboxylate O atom from the symmetry-related picolinate ion and with a chloride ion; the resulting coordination environment can be described as a highly distorted tetrahedron. Compounds 2 and 3 are isostructural mononuclear coordination compounds, each mercury(II) ion being coordinated with the respective halide ion, N,O-bidentate picolinate ion, and N,O-bidentate picolinic acid in a highly distorted square-pyramidal coordination environment. Compounds 1–3 were characterized by IR spectroscopy, PXRD, and thermal methods (TGA/DSC) in the solid state and by ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy in the DMSO solution.