Crystal structure of di-μ-chlorido-bis-[di-chlorido-bis-(methanol-κO)iridium(III)] dihydrate: a surprisingly simple chlorido-iridium(III) dinuclear complex with methanol ligands

The reaction between IrCl3·xH2O in methanol led to the formation of small amounts of the title compound, [Ir2Cl6(CH3OH)4]·2H2O, which consists of two IrCl4O2 octa-hedra sharing an edge via chloride bridges. The mol-ecule lies across an inversion center. Each octa-hedron can be envisioned as being comprised of four chloride ligands in the equatorial plane with methanol ligands in the axial positions. A lattice water mol-ecule is strongly hydrogen-bonded to the coordinating methanol ligands and weak inter-actions with coordinating chloride ligands lead to the formation of a three-dimensional network. This is a surprising structure given that, while many reactions of iridium chloride hydrate are carried out in alcoholic solvents, especially methanol and ethanol, this is the first structure of a chloridoiridium compound with only methanol ligands.