Cis and trans linkage of spin frustrated copper triangles creating Cu6 clusters

Two C3-symmetric guanidine-based copper triangles bridged by acetates in a cis manner and by chloride anions in a trans manner, respectively gave rise to two antiferromagnetically coupled hexanuclear CuII compounds, namely [Cu6L2Cl(μ-OAc)(DMF)3]·DMF (Cu6) and [Cu6L2(μ-Cl)2(DMF)4] (Cu6Cl)(where L stands for fully deprotonated tris (2-hydroxybenzylidene) triaminoguanidinium chloride, H5L). The experimental magnetic data of the two compounds were analyzed theoretically. A relatively good agreement with the experimental data was obtained when using the wavefunction theory (CASSCF) in combination with DFT (B3LYP) calculations for the very strong antiferromagnetic coupling within the Cu3 triangles (Javg = − 300 cm−1 for Cu6 and Javg = − 250 cm−1 for Cu6Cl), leading to spin-frustrated systems. It is worth mentioning that the electronic structure of each CuII center remains very similar in each complex with a Kramers ground state well separated from the first excited state (over 12000 cm−1) and weakly anisotropic (g∥ ≈ 2.40 and g⊥ ≈ 2.10).