Abstract
IN the December issue of the Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, Dr. E. Wiberg reviews at considerable length the experimental evidence from which the structure of the puzzling hydrides of boron may be deduced. That considerable difficulty has been encountered during the last decade in formulating the electronic structure of these compounds will be apparent from the fact that such unsatisfactory devices as singlet linkages, polyvalent hydrogen, a co-ordination number of five for boron, electronic septets, even the sharing of electrons, a new but unexplained kind of ‘electrostatic-electromagnetic’ valency and inequality of the two boron atoms, have all been requisitioned at various times in order to find plausible explanations of the existence of the simple compound known, perhaps wrongly, as boroethane, B2H6.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hydrides of Boron. Nature 139, 381–382 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139381b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139381b0