Nitrosyl-heme and anion-arene complexes: structure, reactivity and spectroscopy

Two topics are selected and illustrated to exemplify (i) a biological and (ii) an organic ionic intermediate. The reactivity behavior of NO adducts with ferric and ferrous hemes has shown remarkable similarities when examined in the gas phase, demonstrating that the largely different NO affinity displayed in solution and in biological media is due to the different coordination environment. In fact, ferrous hemes present a vacant or highly labile axial coordination site, prone to readily bind NO. The vibrational signatures of the NO ligand have also been probed in vacuo for the first time in the nitrosyl complexes deriving from ferrous and ferric hemes under strictly comparable five-coordination at the metal center. Negatively charged sigma-adducts, from the association of anions with 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, an exemplary pi-electron-deficient arene, have been probed by IRMPD spectroscopy and found to display variable binding motifs from a strongly covalent sigma-adduct (Meisenheimer complex) to a weakly covalent sigma-complex, depending on the anion basicity.