The synthesis of dinuclear derivatives of trovacene (
7-C
7H
7)V(
5-C
5H
5) (
1) is reported, in which ethynyl (
6),butadiynyl (
7), and 1,4-di(ethynyl)phenyl (
8) groups serve as spacers between paramagnetic (
S =
1/
2) [5]trovacenylunits. The mononuclear precursors [5]trovacenylcarbaldehyde (
2) and [5]trovacenylacetylene (
4) are also described.Structural characterization by X-ray diffraction has been performed for
4,
6,
7, and
8. Electronic communicationas gleaned from cyclic voltammetry only manifests itself in the reduction processes where redox splitting
E1/2(0/1-, 1-/2-) is resolved for
6 (
E1/2 = 150 mV) and indicated for
7 (
E
1/2 80 mV). Magnetocommunicationleads to exchange coupling of the two electron spins which reside in vanadium centered orbitals. The values
JEPR(
6) = (-)0.92,
JEPR(
7) = (-)0.56, and
JEPR(
8) = (-)0.005 cm
-1 are derived from the
51V hyperfine patterns.Accordingly, attenuation of exchange interaction by oligoalkyne spacers is weak, corresponding to a factor of 0.6only per added -C
C- unit. In the determination of very weak long distance exchange interactions, EPR excelsbecause of the range 5 × 10
-4 J 1.5 cm
-1 accessible in the case of
51V as a reporting magnetic nucleus andbecause competing intermolecular exchange is quenched in dilute fluid solution. This is demonstrated by the value
J(
7) = -3.84 cm
-1 obtained from a magnetic susceptibility study, which exceeds
JEPR(
7) by a factor of 7. Thesmall magnitude of spin exchange interaction between trovacene units reflects the fact that the spin bearing V3d
z2orbital is virtually orthogonal to the
-perimeter ligand orbitals and weakly overlapping only with the a
1g(
) ringorbitals, creating two bottlenecks for spin-exchange in the spacer-containing ditrovacenes.