A collaborative study between Kent and UBC Okanagan reports the first stable, neutral two-coordinate boron(0) complex, now published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The SISC cluster is excited to announce a major publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), resulting from a collaboration between Felipe Fantuzzi (University of Kent) and Conor Pranckevicius (University of British Columbia Okanagan). This groundbreaking work marks the first ambient-temperature isolation of a bottleable monoatomic boron(0) complex coordinated exclusively by neutral donor ligands.
The study describes the synthesis and full characterisation of a two-coordinate L₂B⁰ complex supported by cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene (CAAC) ligands. The neutral, paramagnetic boron(0) species was accessed via a straightforward reduction route and stabilised through strong π-accepting interactions. Further redox chemistry reveals a versatile reactivity profile: oxidation leads to a transient borylene, while further reduction yields a stable boride anion.
Supported by density functional theory calculations, this work not only expands the known oxidation states of boron accessible under mild conditions, but also opens new avenues in low-valent main group chemistry, challenging traditional boundaries between metals and metalloids.
Read the full article here.