Acta Cryst. (2003). E59, m1067–m1069 DOI: 10.1107/S160053680302419X Filipe A. Almeida Paz et al.  [Zn 2 (C 9 H 18 NS 2 ) 4 ] m1067 metal-organic papers Acta Crystallographica Section E Structure Reports Online ISSN 1600-5368 The first dinuclear zinc(II) dithiocarbamate complex with butyl substituent groups Filipe A. Almeida Paz, a Marcia C. Neves, b Tito Trindade b and Jacek Klinowski a * a Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, England, and b Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, CICECO, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal Correspondence e-mail: jk18@cam.ac.uk Key indicators Single-crystal X-ray study T = 180 K Mean (C–C) = 0.009 A ˚ Disorder in main residue R factor = 0.066 wR factor = 0.196 Data-to-parameter ratio = 27.2 For details of how these key indicators were automatically derived from the article, see http://journals.iucr.org/e. # 2003 International Union of Crystallography Printed in Great Britain – all rights reserved The crystal structure of the title compound, bis(-N,N- dibutyldithiocarbamato- 2 S:S 0 )bis[(N,N-dibutyldithio- carba\-forcelb]mato- 2 S,S 0 )zinc(II)], [Zn 2 (C 9 H 18 NS 2 ) 4 ], has been determined at 180 K. The structure contains two crystallographically unique Zn 2+ metal centres, showing almost identical slightly distorted tetrahedral coordination environments, and forming a dinuclear complex with two skew-bridging syn-N,N-dibutyldithiocarbamate ligands. Two other dithiocarbamate ligands are connected to the Zn 2+ centres in a syn,syn-chelate coordination mode. Comment Metal dithiocarbamate complexes have been known for a long time, with the first crystallographic result dating back 50 years, when Simonsen & Ho (1953) reported the space group and unit-cell parameters for the structure of the ethyl analogue of the title compound. There has been a recent renewal of interest in this type of compound, which can act as a molecular precursor in the synthesis of novel metal sulfide nanomaterials (Trindade et al., 2001). Such compounds have been success- fully used as single-molecule precursors to prepare a wide range of nanocrystalline semiconductors, such as ZnS (Malik et al., 2001), CdS (Monteiro et al., 2002; Lazzel & O’Brien, 1999; Trindade, O’Brien & Zhang, 1997), PbS (Trindade, O’Brien, Zhang & Motevalli, 1997) and Bi 2 S 3 (Monteiro et al., 2001). ZnS, a technologically important material as a phosphor and as a white pigment, can be prepared from a well known zinc(II) diethyldithiocarbamate complex [Zn 2 (C 5 H 10 NS 2 ) 4 ], the crystal structure of which has been extensively studied (Simonsen & Ho, 1953; Bonamico et al., 1965; Zvonkova et al., 1967; Tiekink, 2000). A search in the Cambridge Structural Database (Allen, 2002) reveals that an analogous compound containing methyl substituents, viz. [Zn 2 (C 3 H 6 NS 2 ) 4 ], has Received 20 October 2003 Accepted 21 October 2003 Online 31 October 2003