Si-O Elimination for the Generation of Heteronuclear Metal-Metal Bonds

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Compounds containing metal-metal bonds have attracted extensive interest over the last four decades. These compounds are fascinating and potentially useful owing to their ability to react with numerous small molecules of significance to areas such as sustainability and energy technologies (i.e. hydrogen, carbon dioxide). Current methods to access metal-metal bonds apply dangerous alkali metal reagents and are unselective precluding access to heteronuclear metal-metal bonds.This research will seek to rationally synthesise Main Group and Transition Metal species containing hitherto unprecedented metal-metal bonding via the elimination of strong Si-O bonds.Initially the work will focus on the generation of novel Main Group silyl compounds generated by sigma-bond metathesis applying known Main Group metal alkoxides. With a library of silyls generated their reactivity, most notably with Main Group and Transition Metal alkoxides, will be investigated.With a validated methodology to access heteronuclear metal-metal bonds via Si-O elimination in hand, this method will be applied to a much wider range of metals and to alternative ligand systems to access low-coordinate species containing metal-metal bonds.