QTAIM View of Metal-Metal Bonding in Di- and Trinuclear Disulfido Carbonyl Clusters

The experimental and theoretical charge densities in the sulfido-bridged cluster compounds Fe2(μ-S2)(CO)6 (1), Fe3(μ3-S)2(CO)9 (2), Mn2(μ-S2)(μ-CO)(CO)6 (3), and Fe2(μ-S2)(CO)5(PPh3) (4) have been studied using the quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) methodology. High-resolution X-ray diffraction data have been measured for compounds 2–4 at 100 K. The topological analyses show that only in compounds 1 and 4 is there any evidence for metal–metal bonding in terms of the presence of a bond path. For compound 1, the topology of the Fe2S2 cage is highly dependent on the Fe–Fe separation, and the deformation along this vector is an extremely soft mode. The experimentally observed topolog…