Mercuretin as the condensation polymer of tris(acetoxymercuri)acetic acid. The crystal structure of (ClHg) 3CCOOH · DMSO

Abstract

It has been confirmed that the compound obtained by melting mercuric acetate (Stromeyer, 1809; Dimroth, 1902), named mercuretin (Marsh and Fleming Struthers, 1927), is identical with the compound prepared by heating mercuric acetate in acetic anhydride (Sand and Singer, 1903). Mercuretin, prepared by both routes, has been identified as the condensation polymer of tris(acetoxymercuri)acetic acid, AcO[HgC(HgOAc) 2COO] n H, with n ∼ 10. Its hydrolysis in dilute hydrochloric acid gives tris(chloromercuri)acetic acid as the only mercury-containing product. The crystal structure of tris(chloromercuri)acetic acid dimethylsulfoxide solvate, (ClHg) 3CCOOH · DMSO, has been determined by X-ray diffraction methods and refined by full-matrix least-squares to the conventional R W index of 0.074. The HgC bond length was fixed at 2.06 Å in the final refinement, which gave a mean value of 2.33(3) Å for the HgCl bond length.