Hydrothermal synthesis and crystal structure of a novel Keggin polyoxoanion-templated multichain coordination polymer with a flexible bis(imidazole) ligand

By introducing the flexible 1,1′-(1,4-butanediyl)bis(imidazole) (bbi) ligand into the Keggin system, a novel multi-chain compound, (bbi)1.5[Cu(bbi)]4.5[PW12O40]1.5 (1) was synthesized under the hydrothermal conditions. It was characterized by elemental and TG analysis, IR and XPS spectra, cyclic voltammetry, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Compound 1 features in two sorts of polyoxometalates (POMs) chains, the poly-chain of [Cu(bbi)]4.5[PW12O40] and the single-chain of (bbi)[PW12O40]0.5, induced by the POM clusters.