A boron-centered radical: a potassium-crown ether stabilized boryl radical anion

Ningning Yuan; Wenqing Wang; Ziye Wu; Sheng Chen; Gengwen Tan; Yunxia Sui; Xinping Wang; Jun Jiang; Philip P Power

doi:10.1039/c6cc06918e

A boron-centered radical: a potassium-crown ether stabilized boryl radical anion

Chem Commun (Camb). 2016 Oct 20;52(86):12714-12716. doi: 10.1039/c6cc06918e.

Authors

Ningning Yuan¹, Wenqing Wang¹, Ziye Wu², Sheng Chen¹, Gengwen Tan¹, Yunxia Sui¹, Xinping Wang¹, Jun Jiang², Philip P Power³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China. xpwang@nju.edu.cn.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China. jiangj1@ustc.edu.cn.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. pppower@ucdavis.edu.

PMID: 27722270
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc06918e

Abstract

A boron radical contact ion-pair Mes₂B{4-(3,5-dimethylpyridinyl)}K(18-crown-6)(THF) (1K) has been isolated and characterized by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The geometry, bonding and spin density distribution are shown to be affected by the NK interaction. The unpaired electron resides mainly on the boron atom and falls between those of triarylboron radical anions and neutral boron radicals. The work provides a novel boron-centered radical intermediate, connecting anionic and neutral boryl radicals.