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Chemistry

Not just any old anion

Nature volume 464, pages 1136–1137 (2010)Cite this article

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Unlike its neighbours on the right-hand side of the periodic table, boron barely forms an anion. A new trick has been established that allows it to do so, enabling a highly unusual complex to be prepared.

Boron belongs to the second row of the periodic table, but its anion chemistry is different from that of most of the other p-block elements in that row (fluorine, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon). These elements form anions in alkali–metal salts, such as F− in lithium fluoride, OH− in lithium hydroxide, NH2− in lithium amide and CH3− in methyllithium. For many years, however, there were no direct observations of alkali–metal salts that included the analogous boron anion, R2B− (known as a boryl anion; R can be either hydrogen or an organic group).

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Figure 1: A stable anion of borole.

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  1. Kyoko Nozaki is in the Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, School of Engineering, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-8656 Tokyo, Japan. nozaki@chembio.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp,

    Kyoko Nozaki

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Nozaki, K. Not just any old anion. Nature 464, 1136–1137 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/4641136a

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