Magnesium bis-
o-cresol (or
o-methylphenoxide), [Mg(oMP)
2]
n (
1), was prepared througha variety of synthetic routes that involved the stoichiometric reaction of
o-methylphenol(H-oMP), with Mg(Bu)
2, Mg{N(Si(CH
3)
3)
2}
2(THF)
2, or the bulk metal (Mg
0). In all cases thelow-temperature product was found to be soluble, while precipitation occurred at highertemperatures. The precipitate could only be redissolved by the addition of pyridine or asimilarly strongly coordinating Lewis base. The pyridine and NH
3 adducts of
1 were isolatedas monom
eric species, whereas the THF adduct proved to be the dim
eric [Mg(
-oMP)(oMP)(THF)
2]
2,
2. For a limited set of conditions, sufficient control over the precipitation kineticsof the reaction between Mg(Bu)
2 and H-oMP was realized to yield sph
erical morphologies.The window of spherulitic growth was small and could only be partially controlled by varyingreaction conditions during the precipitation. Use of seed particles to control nucleation eventsduring precipitation was found to lead to increased monodispersity of sph
erical [Mg(oMP)
2]
nprecipitate powders.