Design of Pincer Fullerene Ligands thorough [2+3] cycloaddition

[2+3] cycloaddition reactions of a fullerene C20 with azomethine ylide derivatives (RHC-NH+-CHR‒) have investigated in order to design new pincer fullerene ligands. The negative values of [2+3] cycloaddition reaction energies indicate the exothermic character of formation of the considered pincer fullerenes. Exploring of the effects of nature of the flanking arms on fullerene pincer ligands based on the frontier molecular orbital analysis (FMO) indicate that reaction energies well correlate with HOMO of 1,3 dipoles. The pincer-ligated metal complexes obtained by the addition of transition metals to the pincer bites. Natural bonding orbital analyses (NBO) are performed to investigate the delocalization of the localized bonds and lone pairs of donor nitrogen atoms and the transition metals in the considered pincer-ligated metal complexes. Based on our results, the strongest interaction among all the interactions is due to the delocalization of electrons from lone pairs of central nitrogen atoms to the LP* of the transition metal, following by the lone pairs of nitrogen atoms in the flanking arms.