Author: Caitilín Mcmanus

0000000000480883

AUTHOR

Caitilín Mcmanus

A crystalline radical cation derived from Thiele’s hydrocarbon with redox range beyond 1 V

Thiele’s hydrocarbon occupies a central role as an open-shell platform for new organic materials, however little is known about its redox behaviour. While recent synthetic approaches involving symmetrical carbene substitution of the CPh2 termini yield isolable neutral/dicationic analogues, the intervening radical cations are much more difficult to isolate, due to narrow compatible redox ranges (typically 1 V), permitting its isolation in crystalline form. Further single-electron oxidation affords borenium dication 12+, thereby establishing an organoboron redox system fully characterized in all three redox states. We perceive that this strategy can be extended to other transient organic rad…

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Controlling Oxidative Addition and Reductive Elimination at Tin(I) via Hemi-Lability.

We report on the synthesis of a distannyne supported by a pincer ligand bearing pendant amine donors that is capable of reversibly activating E–H bonds at one or both of the tin centres through dissociation of the hemi-labile N–Sn donor/acceptor interactions. This chemistry can be exploited to sequentially (and reversibly) assemble mixed-valence chains of tin atoms of the type ArSn{Sn(Ar)H} n SnAr ( n = 1, 2). The experimentally observed (decreasing) propensity towards chain growth with increasing chain length can be rationalized both thermodynamically and kinetically by the electron-withdrawing properties of the –Sn(Ar)H– backbone units generated via oxidative addition. peerReviewed

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