The Structure of Carbon Suboxide, C
3
O
2
, in the Solid State
Arkady Ellern, Thomas Drews and Konrad Seppelt*
Berlin, Institut fuÈ r Chemie der Freien UniversitaÈt
Received September 11th, 2000.
Abstract. Carbon suboxide, C
3
O
2
, is crystallized from the
melt. According to the X-ray structure determination the
crystal contains two non-crystallographically equivalent mo-
lecules in the asymmetric unit: a = 986.9(2), b = 1206.0(2),
c = 516.0(1) pm, space group Pnma. Both molecules are
linear. A close inspection of the vibrational amplitudes indi-
cates some systematic deviations from linearity.
Keywords: Carbon oxide; Tricarbon dioxide; Crystal struc-
ture; Ab initio calculations
Die Struktur des OCCCO im festen Zustand
Inhaltsu
È
bersicht. Kohlenstoffsuboxid, C
3
O
2
, wurde aus der
Schmelze auskristallisiert. Die Kristallstruktur ist aus zwei
kristallographisch verschiedenen MolekuÈ len aufgebaut. a =
986.9(2), b = 1206.0(2), c = 516.0(1) pm, Raumgruppe Pnma.
Beide MolekuÈ le sind linear. Eine genaue Analyse der Schwin-
gungsellipsoide deutet auf systematische Abweichungen von
der LinearitaÈt hin.
Introduction
From the viewpoint of conventional bonding models,
carbon suboxide, OCCCO, should be a totally linear
molecule. The first question about this arose in 1953
from observations of fine structures in the infrared
spectrum [1]. Today the molecule is best described as
quasilinear [2]. The combined results of i.r. data [3±7]
and electron diffraction measurements [8, 9] agree
that the barrier towards bending at the central carbon
atom is 30.56 cm
±1
(= 0.37 kJ mol
±1
) [6] and with this
only a few cm
±1
above the vibrational ground state. It
is this same order of magnitude of bending barrier
and vibrational state that makes it impossible to de-
cide between linear (no bending barrier) and non line-
ar (high bending barrier) [10]. Other molecules with
similar behaviour are the fulminates X-CNO [11]. Pre-
vious ab initio calculations have predicted, indepen-
dently of basis sets and methods employed, a linear
geometry [12, 13] see also Table 1.
Our approach has been the determination of the
structure in the solid state. Of course it can be antici-
pated that even weak intermolecular interactions will
be strong enough to influence the CCC bond angle
due to its extremely flat potential.
There are precedents for such investigations. The
heterocumulene (C
6
H
5
)
3
P=C=P(C
6
H
5
)
3
is found to be
non linear in the crystal, and two crystallographically
different molecules in the unit cell exhibit strongly dif-
ferent P±C±P angles, of 143.8(6) and 130.1(6) [14].
The other example that can be cited here is that of
F
3
C±CºSF
3
. There exist two crystal phases that differ
not only in the packing of the molecules, but also in
the C±C±S angles of 171.4 and 162.9° [15, 16].
Results
We prepared C
3
O
2
according to the historic method
of dehydrating malonic acid with P
2
O
5
that has been
used already by O. Diels [17]. The yield is very moder-
ate, but the product can easily be purified by vacuum
distillation. Crystal growth has been performed out of
the liquid slightly below the melting point of ±112.5 °C
in situ directly on the diffractometer. The result of the
single crystal structure determination is laid down in
Tables 2, and 3, and Fig. 1±3.
The packing of the molecule is simple: The mole-
cules lie almost perfectly oriented in the ac plane of
the orthorhombic lattice, in layers at y = 0, 0.25, 0.5,
0.75. Each layer has a herringbone pattern, see Fig. 1.
Layers at y = 0.25 and 0.75 are made up by mole-
cule I, layers at y = 0 and 0.5 by molecule II. All atoms
of molecule I lie on a crystallographic mirror plane.
The central atom C2 of molecule II is positioned on a
inversion center. These special positions generate cer-
tain constraints on the geometry and on the vibra-
tional parameters, if no disorder is present.
Both molecules appear completely linear, the lar-
gest deviation from linearity is 1.7(1)° at the central
carbon atom of molecule I. The CC and CO bond
lengths are somewhat shorter than in the gas phase
(electron diffraction), see Table 3. This may well be a
vibrational shrinkage effect, see below.
Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem. 2001, 627, 73±76 Ó WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH, D-69451 Weinheim, 2001 0044±2313/01/62773±76 $ 17.50+.50/0 73
* Prof. Dr. K. Seppelt,
Institut fuÈ r Chemie der FU Berlin,
Fabeckstraûe 34±36,
D-14195 Berlin,
Fax: Int.code +(30) 83 85 42 89
e-mail: seppelt@chemie.fu-berlin.de