Gold phosphine cluster compounds: Chemical and crystallographic difficulties

Conclusions

Compared with most routine structure determinations, analyses of gold cluster compounds are very measuring-time, computer-time, and man-time consuming, and give less accurate results. However, they are equally useful and relevant as far as chemical information is concerned, even when only the gold skeleton and its connectivity with the ligands have been determined. TheR value is a poor guide to the value of a structure determination of this kind. One may even question whether one should take all possible precautions (change X-ray tubes, measure crystal faces, measure high-order reflection intensities) and try to locate light atoms, or perform three or more incomplete analyses of different compounds; certainly the latter gives more chemical information. Of course, none of the difficulties summarized in this note are unique for gold cluster compounds; the conclusions given here are valid generally.