A novel tetranuclear CuI complex with a flexible monothioether ligand

The reaction of a flexible monothioether ligand, 2-[(o-pyridyl)-sulfanylmethyl]-pyridine (L), with CuI leads to the formation of a novel complex [Cu4I4(L)2] (1), which has been characterized by elemental analyses, IR spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography. Single-crystal X-ray analyses show that complex 1 contains two kinds of crystallographic independent complex molecules, and both of them have similar tetranuclear structures with a distorted chair-like Cu4I4 skeleton. In the packing mode of complex 1, there exist S⋯S weak interactions between one kind of tetranuclear molecules and intermolecular π–π contacts in two kinds of tetranuclear molecules. These weak interactions not only stabilize the structure of the complex, but also further link the tetranuclear molecules into a high-dimensional supramolecular architecture.