Assembly of high nuclearity clusters from a family of tripodal tris-carboxylate ligands

A family of four tris-carboxylic acid ligands H3L1-4 have been synthesised and reacted with first row transition metal cations to give nine complexes which have been structurally characterised by X-ray crystallography. The ligands share a common design motif having three arms connected to a benzene core via three ortho-disubstituted phenyl linkers and show a propensity to form high nuclearity complexes.