Facile mechanochemical synthesis of hypervalent tin(iv)-fused azo/azomethine compounds showing solid-state emission†

Mechanochemical synthesis involves carrying out chemical reactions without solvents and has attracted much attention as green chemistry. Herein, we demonstrate solvent- and catalyst-free mechanochemical synthesis of hypervalent tin(IV) compounds with azo/azomethine tridentate ligands and organotin(IV) oxide by manual grinding in an agate mortar. FT-IR spectra indicate that 41–82% of the ligands can be converted to hypervalent tin compounds depending on the reaction conditions. The resulting products exhibit solid-state emission in the yellow to deep-red region without purification.