Synthesis of bimetallic trifluoroacetates through a crystallochemical investigation of their monometallic counterparts: the case of (A, A')(CFCOO)·nHO (A, A' = Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, Mn).

Owing to their potential as single-source precursors for compositionally complex materials, there is growing interest in the rational design of multimetallic compounds containing fluorinated ligands. In this work, we show that chemical and structural principles for a materials-by-design approach to bimetallic trifluoroacetates can be established through a systematic investigation of the crystal-chemistry of their monometallic counterparts. A(CFCOO)·nHO (A = Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, Mn) monometallic trifluoroacetates were employed to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The crystal-chemistry of monometallic trifluoroacetates was mapped using variable-temperature single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, and thermal analysis. The evolution with temperature of the previously unknown crystal structure of Mg(CFCOO)·4HO was found to be identical to that of Mn(CFCOO)·4HO. More important, the flexibility of Mn(CFCOO)·4HO (x = 1, 3) to adopt two structures, one isostructural to Mg(CFCOO)·4HO, the other isostructural to Ca(CFCOO)·4HO, enabled the synthesis of Mg-Mn and Ca-Mn bimetallic trifluoroacetates. MgMn(CFCOO)·4HO was found to be isostructural to Mg(CFCOO)·4HO and exhibited isolated metal-oxygen octahedra with Mg and Mn nearly equally distributed over the metal sites (Mg/Mn: 45/55). CaMn(CFCOO)·4HO was isostructural to Ca(CFCOO)·4HO and displayed trimers of metal-oxygen corner-sharing octahedra; Ca and Mn were unequally distributed over the central (Ca/Mn: 96/4) and terminal (Ca/Mn: 38/62) octahedral sites.