Inaugural ScotChem lecture: Single, Double, Triple, Chains: New Forays into Boron-Boron-Bond Formation

Due to its inherent electron deficiency, boron forms polyhedral boranes, made up of multicenter bonds, rather than chains or rings with electron-precise boron-boron bonds. In the case of the latter, only very few well-defined examples were known, which all suffer from low-yielding, non-selective syntheses that solely rely on reductive coupling of amino(halo)boranes. Consequently, the area of classical boron-boron multiple bonds is relatively undeveloped. Over the past two years we have put significant effort into the development of new synthetic strategies to overcome this seemingly element-specific deficiency. Here, initial results on the following topics will be presented:

- metal-mediated dehydrocoupling of boranes
- improved reduction protocols for NHC-stabilized diborenes and diborynes
- metal-promoted catenation of borylenes