1568 https://doi.org/10.1107/S2056989017013603 Acta Cryst. (2017). E73, 1568–1571 research communications Received 16 June 2017 Accepted 22 September 2017 Edited by W. Imhof, University Koblenz-Landau, Germany Keywords: crystal structure; zinc(II); coordina- tion complex; ethane-1,2-diamine. CCDC reference: 1576091 Supporting information: this article has supporting information at journals.iucr.org/e (Acetonitrile-jN)aqua[N,N 0 -bis(pyridin-2-yl- methyl)ethane-1,2-diamine-j 4 N,N 0 ,N 00 ,N 000 ]zinc(II) perchlorate Ugochukwu Okeke, Yilma Gultneh and Ray J. Butcher* Department of Chemistry, Howard University, 525 College Street NW, Washington, DC 20059, USA. *Correspondence e-mail: rbutcher99@yahoo.com The structure of the title compound, [Zn(C 14 H 18 N 4 )(C 2 H 3 N)(H 2 O)](ClO 4 ) 2 , contains a six-coordinate cation consisting of the tetradentate bispicen ligand, coordinated water, and coordinated acetonitrile, with the latter two ligands adopting a cis configuration. There are two formula units in the asymmetric unit. Both cations show almost identical structural features with the bispicen ligand adopting the more common cis- conformation. One of the four perchlorate anions is disordered over two positions, with occupancies of 0.9090 (15) and 0.0910 (15). There is extensive inter-ionic hydrogen bonding between the perchlorate anions and O—H and N—H groups in the cations, including a bifurcated hydrogen bond between an N—H group and two O atoms of one perchlorate anion. As a result of this extended hydrogen-bond network, the ions are linked into a complex three-dimensional array. 1. Chemical context One of the greatest challenges in synthetic chemistry is the selective conversion of non-activated C—H bonds to useful functional groups (Gunay & Theopold, 2010). Coordination complexes have been extensively explored due to their potential to catalyze such transformations. The ligand’s chelation around the metal ion determines the number and relative orientation of vacant coordination sites where term- inal oxidants and/or substrates can bind. Installed steric bulk or substrate binding groups can either preclude certain mol- ecules from accessing the active site (Chen & White, 2010) or attract compounds with specific shapes or functional groups (Das et al. , 2006). These benefits rely upon the ability to understand, predict, and control the coordination geometry of the polydentate ligand. The 1,2-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)ethane-1,2-diamine (bis- picen) ligand and other tetradentate ligands with reduced imine linkages have been observed to wrap around single transition metal ions in primarily two fashions: cis- and cis- (Scheme 2) (Chen et al., 2002). The cis-, in which the two ISSN 2056-9890