It is therefore evident that to capitalise on the highly promising photophysical properties of the Au complexes, a simple, mercury-free protocol would enable a wider range of modified C^N^C ligands to be employed in this chemistry. This would, in turn, allow for greater flexibility in the informed introduction of new properties into the complexes through modified C^N^C ligands. In order to develop such a route, we have prepared the related ligand 1 (Fig. ), in which there is an alkoxy chain on the phenyl carbon orthoand metato the phenyl-pyridine bond. The compound is prepared by reaction of 2,6-dibromopyridine with 2,3-dimethoxyphenylboronic acid using a Suzuki-Miyaura protocol (89% yield), with the 2,2',3,3'-tetrabutyloxy-substituted ligand resulting from demethylation using pyridinium chloride (90% yield) followed by re-alkylation under Williamson ether conditions using 1-bromobutane (53% yield). The steric demands of these materials mean that in the free ligand, the phenyl and pyridyl rings cannot be co-planar (Fig. ), one consequence of which is that in the preferred anti atropoisomer, § the meta-pyridyl hydrogens are diastereotopic so that, in the 1 H NMR spectrum, the pyridine hydrogens present as two AB spin systems (Fig. ). However, when complexed to gold (Fig. ), the rings are forced to be coplanar and the two hydrogens become equivalent (Fig. ). -7-