Introduction
N-donor aromatic hydrocarbons, such as pyridine and its structural
analogs represent a class of extremely valued ligands and ubiquitously
have played important roles in the development of coordination
chemistry.[1-6] Interestingly, the heteroatom
substitution in the aromatic hydrocarbons introduces Lewis basicity due
to σ-lone pair of nitrogen and Lewis acidity due to C-N
π*-orbitals.[6-9] Moreover, the interactions of
these classes of compounds with the transition metal fragments could be
widely varied from the formation of σ-type or π-type complexes.
Accordingly, a wide variety of N-based aromatic hydrocarbon ligands has
been designed and synthesized in order to generate organometallic
compounds with diverse structures, shapes, nuclearity and
dimensionality.[3,6,10,11] The diversity in the
chemistry of such ligands have been heavily utilized for different
applications in the field of biomedical applications, thermal reaction
batteries, semiconducting materials and
catalysis.[12-16]