A planar per-borylated digermene

Abstract

A tetraboryl digermene synthesized by the reaction between a dianionic digermanide nucleophile and a boron halide electrophile is dimeric both in the solid state and in hydrocarbon solution. It features both a planar ‘alkene-like’ geometry for the Ge2B4 core, and an exceptionally short Ge 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 11111111 00000000 11111111 00000000 00000000 00000000 Ge double bond. These structural features are consistent with the known electronic properties of the boryl group, and with lowest energy (in silico) fragmentation into two triplet bis(boryl)germylene fragments.