Towards engineering crystals of ionic complexes. Control over the nuclearity of a cationic metal complex by non-coordinating anions

In the reaction of Cu(CH3CO2)2·H2O with diethylenetriamine in equimolar proportion in ethanol in the presence of a slight excess of NaX, the nuclearity of the product is found to depend on the size of the non-coordinating anion X−; the larger the anion, the lower the tendency of polymerisation in the counter cation.