Solution (source code)

= Solution

The simplest assignment is \b[two phenylethynyl bridges and four equivalent terminal <methyl groups>], represented as $\mathrm{Al_2Me_4(\mu-C\equiv CPh)_2}$. All 12 methyl protons then occupy the same class of environment, accounting for the single nonaromatic singlet without requiring methyl bridge/terminal averaging. The phenyl protons account for the aromatic-region signals; the metal-bound acetylide has no terminal acetylenic <hydrogen>.

An <alkynyl bridge> has electronic possibilities unavailable to a saturated methyl: in addition to sigma attachment from its <carbon> end to one <Lewis acid> centre, its occupied C≡C pi system can donate to the other <aluminium>. A delocalized sigma/pi description stabilizes the phenylethynyl-bridged arrangement while keeping the <methyl groups> terminal. One must not draw an unchanged localized triple bond plus two independent full ordinary Al–C bonds at the same <carbon> and count all of them as separate two-electron bonds. The exact distribution of sigma and pi donation requires structural or orbital evidence; this NMR observation alone does not supply a numerical bridge <bond order>.

The absence of <concentration> or <temperature> dependence is consistent with this preferred arrangement throughout the measured range. It is not proof that the molecule has no motion: exchange between symmetry-equivalent terminal positions, or exchange remaining fast throughout that range, could be spectroscopically invisible. Phenylethynyl bridging in this particular dimethylaluminium dimer has independent primary NMR precedent.<Organoaluminium compounds. XIII. Association through aryl and phenylethynyl bridges by E. A. Jeffery and others>[1968, printed p. 137, summary: phenylethynyl groups bridge dimethyl(phenylethynyl)aluminium dimers]{ref}